Aaron: plain truths from an Amish man

A conversation with Aaron Stoll of Aylmer, Ontario and Cookeville Christian Community.

Amish life from the perspective of an Amish man indeed, in whom is no guile.

Music and Audio by Buddy Anderson … check him out on Spotify @fromanothamista

References:

Books by John Keim (available on Amazon)

Comfort for the Burned and Wounded

Comfort & Hope: A Holistic Approach to Wellness

Spring Valley Farms canning from a local market: https://oldegeneralstore.com/collections/spring-valley-farms?srsltid=AfmBOooG3VS6Y82Jba9kADH4OPNjToULThzosk49enqtySwT-b5AkM5e

Story of Elmo Stoll, Aaron’s father:

http://www.irawagler.com/?p=511

Here’s my contact…

Email [e-mail]

Instagram @thisisemotionart

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to another conversation.

(00:02):
Before we drop off the edge, I want to say thank you to Buddy Anderson for his music, creativity, and sound genius
contribution to this episode. I appreciate you, Buddy.
Check out Buddy's creative art on Spotify at From Another Mista. We'll have a link in the notes.

(00:23):
And Angela Cook, editor extraordinaire, helping get these conversations edited so we can post them.
I really appreciate working with you guys.
Okay, this is a conversation I had with Aaron Stoll, an Amish man.
I met Aaron right around the time I turned 15 when I launched out of the inner-city cult world and

(00:49):
head first into the Amish world in
in Cookville, Tennessee.
Aaron was one of the teenagers that I got to know, spent a lot of time with him for
around four years, and it was at a very formative part of my life. So he's a big part of my story.
After I left the Amish world,

(01:09):
I lost touch with most of it, but I never fully lost contact with Aaron and
a couple of summers ago, we had a chance to reconnect.
Our oldest boy
decided that he wanted to go and experience what it was like to spend a summer with the Amish.

(01:29):
So I reached out to Aaron and he and the community there
welcomed Ike with open arms and gave him a summer he's never gonna forget.
Working in the fields, barefoot, and milking cows, etc.
Aaron is an Amish guy. Well, mostly Amish from a long line of
strong old order Amish families.

(01:52):
I'm really thankful that he agreed to record a conversation
because he has a super unique and interesting
worldview and it's also really interesting to take a peek behind a
type of community that is pretty unusual in modern Western culture.
So here's a conversation with Aaron Stoll.

(02:14):
An Amish man indeed in whom is no guile. Enjoy.

(02:44):
Emotion Art.
A space for emotional art. Creative energy moving outward in conscious expression.
Emotion Art.
An emotion art gallery.
This is Emotion Art.

(03:05):
Emotion Art.
Emotion Art.
Emotion Art.
Hey Aaron. Ooh, hold on.
Audio has to change.

(03:27):
Alright, how about now?
Oh, I can try again. Good morning, Michael.
Good morning. I can hear you now.
Well, that must have been a change in your heart, not in mine because I didn't move.
That is correct.
Now, the most difficult part of these conversations for me is the technical side.
Trying to make all the right buttons light up and the right things connect to the right things.

(03:53):
So, I just do the best I can.
You said you're in Mexico right now?
I am in Mexico about half an hour south of Los Angeles, right on the beach.
Are you there for the beach?
No. It's a San Aviv medical clinic.
I'm here with my oldest son, Joshua, who is being treated for Lyme's disease.

(04:19):
Oh, wow.
I am sitting on the fifth floor in our bedroom slash apartment that has a view out over the ocean, but I am not allowed to touch the ocean.
I can look at it, I can hear it, but I may not go down to the water.

(04:41):
Why are you not allowed to?
So, they have a very strict schedule here. They regulate everything, including the clothes we wear and the food we eat.
And there is a cliff down to the water. And I think that's convenient for them.
So, we're not allowed to leave the premises during treatment.

(05:04):
What's the purpose of that?
I think it's partly because as soon as you step off the property, there's a lot of unknowns that enter in.
And they schedule a lot of treatments and they don't want anyone missing ever.
And beyond that, they are very aggressive with diet.

(05:26):
And the first thing I would do if I stepped off of this property is I would look for coffee.
And coffee is not part of the protocol.
So, just for example.
Why is it so regimented?
Because they treat health as mind, body, and spirit.

(05:48):
It's a holistic type of healing place.
That's right.
Oh, interesting.
So, there is meditation classes, physical exercise. They try to get every dimension they can, like, get their hands or their minds on.
By that place.

(06:10):
The person who we are working with for healthcare recommended them.
So, that would basically be the simple answer.
The reason we went to him in the first place is because we appreciate his mind-body approach.

(06:31):
I see.
I would not have necessarily been attracted to exactly this brand of approach.
But I'm open to it.
Well, that's a heavy purpose for a trip down to Mexico.
I'm sorry, you're going through that right now.
Yeah, thank you.
When we have kids, we have to deal with the things that come our way, obviously.

(06:54):
That's right. That's right.
And I'm a firm believer in the concept that all things that happen to us and that we choose to do in the end work together for our good.
I like that.
That doesn't come from me now. That comes from Paul.
Yeah.
You know, the Apostle Paul.

(07:16):
But yeah, I've come to believe that.
And further, that there is rarely, if ever, any serious growth or maturing that does not directly connect to suffering.
I agree with that.
That sounds true.
Yeah. And you didn't say you liked that, did you?

(07:38):
No. No. No.
It's very difficult.
I mean, eventually the spoiler alert, the suffering, when you get to the other side of it, you realize that it was a story you were telling about something that wasn't necessarily of itself bad or suffragy.
But when you're in the middle of it, the stories are as real as if it was just real outside of your control.

(08:03):
That's right. It often is, actually.
Yeah.
So suffering has to be gone through.
That's a very Eastern mindset.
Pardon me?
I'm just saying that's a very Eastern mindset.
Focus is the embrace of suffering.
But then I thought about it and as there's a lot of people in the West that embrace that as well.

(08:27):
Yeah, I just want to make sure that's what you were saying, because it's a very Jesus or apostolic concept.
Yes.
It is not a contemporary evangelical concept.
That sounds true, actually.
I would say it is historically, it's a fundamental of Jesus and the Apostles teachings.

(08:49):
Yeah, that sounds true.
So last time I was hanging out with you, it's been a little while, a couple of years.
But we were working out in your, I believe it was, you had, I don't know what the field was.
We were taking plastic out of a field and we were talking about worldview.

(09:12):
And you introduced me to some Orthodox, like early church perspectives.
And it was a whole new way of looking at things for me.
It kind of started me on a dive into it, exploration into it.
And as somebody who cares only to find the truth, whatever that is, wherever it is, whatever it looks like,

(09:33):
as I know you are as well, the first thing I had to do was break down the way that I looked at the world up until that point.
Because you know my history.
I know some of it.
Just so many different brands and shades of perspective.
And I just formed into a chameleon.
And so not really knowing how I actually felt about anything.

(09:59):
That conversation with you was pivotal.
It started me off on, I don't know, I guess it just feels like giving myself permission to look for the truth.
OK. Tell me about it.
I think it was you were talking about your perspective of heaven, hell and purgatory.
And you told a story about a guy who had a plot of land and then he sells off all the topsoil.

(10:29):
You were saying that in your perspective, it's not that he's going to just get punished for making that piece of earth unusable,
but he's going to have an opportunity to do that same thing over again and do it right.
I don't know. It's been a little while.
I don't remember. But does that ring a bell for you?

(10:50):
Yeah, that's funny because I totally do not remember that story.
I have very dim recollection of the conversation.
But I do recall working with you and marveling at how far distant our paths have taken us.

(11:12):
And it's not just you that it moved. It's also myself.
Yes.
But our paths have diverged. They've been branched widely, I think.
Yeah, I would not be able to recall details of that conversation, which sadly seems to be something that is growing more acute as the years go by.

(11:34):
I have a horrendous difficulty with remembering things.
I feel like I have the same problem.
Okay.
And I feel like my memory of that piece of a conversation with you, that's burned into my memory because even though it was just you talking about whatever you were thinking about at the moment,

(11:55):
probably in response to a question of mine, to me, it was something I'd never heard before.
And it was just like it froze that moment in time in my memory.
So I relate to that horrible recall ability, and I've just decided to embrace it and not feel bad about it because I can't do anything about it.
I'm just going to remember the things that come to my memory.

(12:16):
It's much more peaceful that way.
Yeah, thanks for the assurance there.
Yeah.
So the thing I've always been curious about hearing more about your worldview ever since then, I mean, I've always been curious about you because I kind of mean you've been part of more than one formative part of my life.

(12:40):
And I like the way you think.
I feel like you're honest with yourself.
You don't shy away from something that feels ouchy.
And because you've given yourself that, you're also not afraid to say something that is going to be challenging or rock somebody else's boat.
I appreciate those things.
And I'm curious what the world looks like through your eyes because all I have are snippets of memories.

(13:05):
I mean, I knew you in Cookville where it was just a different life, a different world.
And you've done a lot of changing since then. And since that conversation, I've done a lot of changing.
I feel like I was very much adrift at that point.
And I feel very much more grounded.
Okay.

(13:26):
When you talk, what I hear is what I call a optimistic cosmology or a joyful cosmology.
Just the core understanding that everything that we can perceive exists for a purpose.
And it's not just a cold, lifeless accident.
And anyway, we're going to disagree on details and stuff.

(13:49):
But I think that we live in a loving universe, if you will.
It's pretty self-evident because humans have the capacity of love.
Right. Yeah.
I would love to hear a walkthrough of who you are, like where you came from and how you were raised and stuff, just as kind of a background for who you are now.

(14:14):
Does that feel like something you'd be willing to explore?
Yeah, we're going to have to be careful or that could go into like hours and even days.
I mean, if you're willing to make the attempt, one of the most interesting things I've ever looked at is what the world looks like from someone else's eyes.

(14:36):
And you have a unique set of eyes that I'd love to see through.
You may have to interject if I move too fast or if I wander too much.
Or we could just start with where you were born.
I mean, you don't have to have a narrative.
That's really difficult for my brain to do.

(14:57):
If you want to, that's great.
But otherwise, it could just be a conversation.
Well, so you know where I was born.
I was born in Canada, in Elmer, Ontario, in Amish community.
I also have an awful, horrendous memory.
I know the things I remember about you in Cookeville.

(15:18):
I don't remember much about what your history is.
Okay. Well, you spent time at the Elmer Amish community.
I did.
I was born in southern Ontario, and that's where I was born.
Okay.
So I spent my early childhood there, went to school there in the Amish school,
lived there until I was 13.

(15:41):
I actually do not have a lot of distinct memories.
I think my childhood was pretty uneventful.
I was born into, I'm going to say, a stable, emotionally healthy family.
So my childhood was non-traumatic to the extreme.

(16:05):
How big was your family?
There are seven children.
So I have five brothers and one sister.
And she came along, she was the second to the youngest.
So I grew up washing a lot of dishes.
That's awesome.
I have learned to hate, but which was okay.

(16:27):
And I don't think you had a dishwasher.
We did not have an electric dishwasher, no.
So Morse and Buggy, non-electric, milking cows.
I milked a lot of cows by hand.
By the time I was nine or 10 years old, I was getting up at 5 or 5.30 in the morning

(16:49):
and milking one or two cows, then going in for breakfast with the rest of the family.
And of course, milking cows in the evening too, this is by hand, helping with the chores.
So actually just a very healthy and good way for a child to grow up.
Probably barefoot.

(17:11):
So in that time period up until you were 13, I kind of look at that as a stage one.
I know you're kind of like, you know, it was just a non-traumatic kind of flows together.
But how did that whole time period feel for you?
Like, what does it feel like when you think about it?
Oh, I was happy.
And I lived my own life.

(17:33):
I did not do a lot of friend things.
I read books, went hiking in the woods, and just enjoyed myself.
Did little projects, raised pigeons for money, got ripped off by some other people in the community.

(17:56):
Which was somewhat traumatic, but it was okay.
I've since gotten over that.
Those traumas have healed?
Oh, yes.
Nice.
My father was one of the leaders in the church.
Was then ordained bishop, which in an Amish sense would make him the head elder.

(18:17):
He was a very talented speaker and writer.
So I would have a lot of memories of sitting in church under his sermons being spellbound.
And I have this little memory, it's funny.
I remember visiting with some of my friends, we would have been school age.

(18:40):
And somehow we got on the subject of who we like to listen to preaching.
And I had just assumed that all little boys liked to hear their own father preach.
That that would be tops.
And it was quite a shock to realize that no, when the other boys who also had father in the ministry,

(19:07):
they didn't necessarily pick their own father as their favorite preacher.
It was like a world opener for me.
Not that much hinges on it, but it switched some of my orientation.
Instead of thinking I had the most awesome father in the world,

(19:28):
I had just assumed everybody thinks they have the most awesome father in the world.
And so from that, I came to the conclusion that maybe there is something a little special about my father.
And I think that actually was maybe an unfortunate experience that contributed to a growing sense of maybe elitism.

(19:52):
That I am part of an above average community of Amish people,
and I am having an above average father, and probably I also am slightly above average, or maybe a lot of average.
So just keep that in mind as a little bit of some of my formation and my perspective.

(20:18):
Yeah, I feel like I had similar perspectives about myself somehow with my garbled up upbringing.
I wonder if that's something that most humans feel.
Well, pride is a very basic part of human nature, yeah.
Yeah, and knowing your dad, having spent four years listening to your dad's preaching and cultivating a friendship with him,

(20:45):
that makes perfect sense to me because he's one of the most, the warmest, kindest, like he just exuded kindness.
He was so gentle, so kind, and so intelligent, like emotionally intelligent.
He could read a room. He was an inspirational figure, so that makes very good sense to me.

(21:09):
Something else that I grew up with that I cannot very well explain because it would not have been my father's personal perspective,
and it would not historically have been Amish worldview.
I grew up with a very strong fear of hell and eternal punishment, and the sense that if I don't do this just right, God is going to punish me.

(21:49):
And that primed me, I think, for a lot of confusion then later in my teens,
which would bring it to what you're calling stage two of my life in Cookeville.
Yes, sir.
If you're done with stage one.
Oh, like you said, you have to just be done with the stages when they're done, or this is going to be a 25-part conversation.

(22:18):
So the move to Cookeville was pretty exciting.
That was when you were 13.
I was 13. It was basically a revolution. My father would have seen it as a revolution.
Other people involved would have seen it as that.
We were breaking out of the tradition and culture of the time and beginning a new age or era in how we did church,

(22:53):
how we read the Bible, and how we followed God.
And I was so excited.
I knew that within a few years' time, everybody who is serious about following God and doing his will will have joined us,

(23:15):
because it's just so clear.
So it didn't actually quite work out that way.
But it was amazingly close.
Because within five years, there were five communities.
It's actually phenomenal growth.

(23:36):
What would you attribute that to?
Was it your dad's vision, or was it much more complicated than that?
It's more complicated than that.
So my father had just a lot of charisma there.
He made a very good cult leader.
And beyond that, there was a need for renewal and breakout in the conservative Amish Mennonite world.

(24:06):
Because you guys had come from the old order.
Right.
Yeah.
And one of the things that really pushed that is people from outside general society,
who were wanting to join the Anabapt churches and found it just very difficult to make the transition.

(24:28):
Because outsiders weren't welcome?
Outsiders were very welcome.
But it's a very difficult culture to join.
Everything is so different.
One of the first things that people struggle with is having to learn two languages.

(24:50):
So in an English speaking country, they have to learn Pennsylvania German for communication.
And then they have to learn High German.
And not today's High German, but the High German of the 16th century, when Martin Luther translated the scriptures.
They have to learn to read and understand it as well.

(25:14):
So some people learn languages easily, but many do not, especially as adults.
So are you saying that that would be kind of a cost of membership?
Like they're open to outsiders, but they say you first have to learn these languages, you have to conform to all this stuff before?
Well, you don't have to learn the language before, but you have to want to learn the language.

(25:37):
You have to be trying to learn it.
Meanwhile, you will be sitting in church services Sunday after Sunday, and you will not understand anything that is preached.
And much of the social conversation, unless people are directly addressing you, they will be talking across you and past you in German.

(26:02):
And so that's a huge barrier.
And remember, we already have people who are joining a very tight knit culture where most of them, their job experiences do them no good.
Yes.
They don't have family there and they're joining a culture where everybody has a lot of family.

(26:25):
And so in just about every way imaginable, it's foreign.
I would have always perceived Old Order Amish as being very closed to outsiders as a form of self-protection.
And it's just interesting to me.
What I'm hearing you saying is that, no, they're not closed to outsiders.
It's just that the bar of entry is so high that most outsiders can't stomach it.

(26:47):
That's right.
Yeah. Interesting.
Yeah, no, it would be very rare for Old Order people to say that they do not welcome converts.
Sure.
Does that make sense?
But they will be very quick to tell you that the reason converts are coming to us is because we have something to offer and they're coming to us.

(27:09):
We are not changing for them.
Yeah.
And so...
Go on.
Well, I was just going to say the truth is that they do have something to offer because I lived a version of that life for four years and it is the most serene.
It feels like the memories of that time are sun-drenched glade, you know, just like just very, what are the words for these feelings?

(27:36):
Just grounded, no sense of time.
You just roll with what's happening and you're in the dirt and you're in the river and you're just very present.
It feels like the most present maybe part of my life, even though I was very, it was a very traumatic time of life for me.
But they have something to offer and it's because they hold themselves so hard away from everything around them that they're able to maintain that contact with the earth, basically, with the ground, with where they are.

(28:05):
I don't know.
That's how I see it.
That's right.
But then you have to trade everything else.
But one of the foundational premises of Anabaptism is that the scriptures have the ultimate authority and that we will answer to scripture first and then to others.

(28:31):
And when you say answer, like you're talking in a, like, what does that mean, answer to?
As an authority.
But like you're talking about like after death?
No.
Choices in this life that we will follow what we find in scripture about everything else.

(28:53):
Okay.
And whether it's culture, tradition, government, or whatever other coercion, that comes second to what we find in scripture.
So my father, as being directly involved with numerous people and families trying to join the Amish churches, became more and more disillusioned with the status quo.

(29:29):
And he came to the conclusion that we cared more about our tradition than we did about the scripture.
And when he suggested changing things, like the language, he ran into a lot of opposition.

(29:55):
And so that is why I say the move to Cookeville was very much a revolution.
It was throwing off of basically anything that we had assumed and saying we will go read the Bible and we will make our choices based on what we find.

(30:21):
So there was actually a three part formula that was articulated by my father.
And that was for decision making.
There's three steps to use in making a decision.
First question is, what does the Bible say?

(30:42):
Then if the Bible is not clear on the subject.
Okay.
So the Bible does not say what language we should have in church, for example.
Right.
I mean, the Roman Catholics have Latin, the Amish have German.
The Bible does not tell us what language to use.

(31:04):
So that's the first question. What does the Bible tell us?
The Bible does, for example, tell us one man, one woman for life.
But that's marriage.
Right.
So you don't go anywhere.
You don't listen to anything anybody says outside of that.
If that's what the Bible says, that's what you do.

(31:26):
But if the Bible is not clear, then the next question we ask is, well, the first generations of Christians, how did they do this?
What did they say?
Okay.
So we can find examples by going back there and we see if it's a language question, we see that they spoke the languages that the people spoke of wherever they were.

(31:55):
So that would answer the language question.
Where do you find that though?
Because you're talking once you don't find the answer in the Bible.
So where do you look for these references?
There's a lot of history and writings from the first several centuries of the church that are still available.

(32:16):
Okay.
And the bulk of those have been translated into English.
Do you have like a standout example?
So the kind of the go-to source for my father and what's still before me is the Anta-Nicene fathers.

(32:38):
Anta as in A-N-T-E before Nicene, which just simply it's a set of maybe 12 or 13 books and it has the bulk of the most common and translated into English writings from the first three centuries of the church.

(33:02):
It's Anta-Nicene, which means basically before the Council of Nicene.
Okay. I'm going to look that up.
Yes. There is some history there.
So that's step two.
Step two is if we can't find clarity in the scripture, we go to the early church.
And step three is if there's still no clarity there, then we go to Anabaptist history, which culminates obviously in our own tradition and practice.

(33:37):
So yeah, just questions of day to day life. The idea was if the Bible and the early church example does not give us clear direction one way or the other, then we should be slow to change what we are doing.

(33:58):
Well, basically what we have inherited from our ancestors.
And what I heard, what I think I hear you saying is first look to the Bible.
When there's a question, do we do this or do we do this?
First you look to the Bible. If the answer is not clearly there, you look to the earliest Christian leaders that have recorded whatever.

(34:21):
And then if the answer can't be found clearly there, then just keep doing whatever you're doing already.
Right.
Fantastic.
Especially if you come from a tradition and culture that you see as some value.
Right. Right. And that makes a very simple, a simple sense.
It'd be easy to maintain a lifestyle with those.
Yeah. So, so yeah, good job. You did that. You took 10 minutes of my chatter and put it into about 45 seconds.

(34:49):
But isn't that what conversation is all about? Figuring out the nuggets of how we think?
Yeah. So that's kind of the premise of the Cookville movement.
And I bought into that with great enthusiasm.
And so when you came, we were halfway through that era.

(35:17):
And yes, you would have found not only myself, but most people pretty enthused, a very deep Biden to our package.
And you had a very, very wide variety of Pete backgrounds that were there when I showed up from Amish, Mennonite, German Baptist.

(35:40):
I mean, Southern Baptist, like, I don't know.
I was going to say everything from through evangelical Roman Catholics right through middle class American even.
Yes. Yes. And such colorful characters, some interesting people, because these were all people that were trying to escape or they wanted to find a life envelope that fit what they thought they should be living.

(36:05):
And so they're trying to do something different and they're all trying to homogenize in this.
Oh, my goodness. It was so interesting.
That's right. Yep.
I can remember so many stories that I just I don't know why I can remember so many stories because I normally have a bad memory, but just of all of the misfunctions of people who are incredibly talented and high level in their industries that come and try to live a simple farming based, no internal combustion motor, you know, just just do without everything that they were raised to be good at.

(36:41):
It is interesting. Interestingly, most of those people were drawn, not so much because it was low tech or the other details of our off grid life.
Yes. But because they were looking for utopia.
Yes, that checks out.

(37:03):
This seems to promise it.
Mm hmm. I mean, it's this this smacks of some of the energies from the 70s.
Very different, but yeah, but very, very much repackaged. Correct. Very much. Well, they're still it's the searchers that are similar, more so than the package.

(37:24):
So, for me,
those were spiritually and identity wise. Those were very much the formative years of my life.
So what happened then, and you will remember this well, is there was a decision made.

(37:45):
It was very much unusually. It was very much top down. The ministry made this decision and most of us were very unhappy with it, but we had like no other choice.
Because the ministry made the decision that the groups, these five communities in three different states and one other country are not long term sustainable. And so we're going to disperse.

(38:17):
Why?
And that, what's that?
Why did they make? Why? So that's actually not what I thought you were going to talk about, but and this is, I wasn't aware of this level of involvement, but why did they feel like it wasn't sustainable long term?
So some of that was built on the things my father struck struggled with before he died.

(38:40):
So he died in 1998, eight years into the journey. And he was struggling a lot and that would have been part of what pushed you to the old order Amish in Ontario.
Yes.
Is he was struggling with the question of our cultural roots and identity deep enough.

(39:06):
Oh.
If you want to put it into a one line, it would be that.
Change was getting out of control.
Right. Yes. Are we going to end up a drift culturally and therefore spiritually.
I see. So culturally and spiritually it was not sustainable long term. That makes sense.

(39:28):
That was his, that was his question.
Okay.
And before he had that question answered, he died.
Interesting. But the unease just kept growing and permeating.
And so that was the most intense within the leadership circle.

(39:51):
And after he died, everything fell apart very quickly or are you saying that it started before that?
Well, I'm saying his unease.
Yeah.
And his, his questioning whether we have, whether we have enough to hold us together and to anchor us.
Identity wise.

(40:12):
Yes.
For the long term, that question he had not answered. He had, he was asking, but was left unanswered.
I see.
And the leadership circle kept on chewing on that question and it took them two years, but after two years, they came to the conclusion that the answer to that is no.

(40:35):
There is not enough to hold us together.
And they could not agree.
This is the leadership of the five communities.
They could not agree between themselves on what to do about that.
So they, there was a general agreement that we need to join with an older, more established group of churches in order to get that rootedness and identity.

(41:07):
If you follow, if you follow the thought.
Yeah.
So we can, we can build culture and tradition, but it takes generations.
Yes.
Or we can, we can do a transplant that can be done.
It's extremely painful, but it can be done relatively quickly.
So it's like we're trying, we're trying to grow a whole, a whole limb here, a whole new limb on our body.

(41:33):
And it's like, this is just not going to happen.
It's just not, it's, it's, it's not viable.
Oh, it's time for a transplant.
Right.
That was the idea.
Yeah.
And the problem was those, that group of leaders were able actually to work together fairly well in the, in the, in the current context.

(41:55):
But when it came to, well, if we're going to transplant, then they could not agree on which direction.
Right.
Right.
So what happened is we have two churches, two congregations who joined the Mennonites.
We have one who joined the Amish and we have two who just dispersed.

(42:18):
And so for the rank and file, it was a very difficult time because it's not what we wanted.
And all these decisions were being made by, only by the leadership.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they were not decisions we would have made.

(42:39):
So was there no, I would say that's almost universal.
Was there no forum for input from the general population, congregation?
In that case, no.
Oh, that had to have been frustrating.
Where were you in that?
So I was in Bandon, Oregon, staying out at Stan Avery's in a little, sleeping in a little camper in his yard.

(43:08):
When the news came in that there had been a minister's meeting and the decision was made to disband the community and I was just crushed.
You had to feel far away.
Yeah, it was very difficult.
So that 10 year church community, cultural revolutionary experience gave me that basically formed my identity and my worldview.

(43:41):
And the question of where to go from there was not easily answered.
A couple of questions. Do you feel like if your dad, I think I remember the circumstances around his death pretty clearly.
And it was like, it was just an extremely unexpected, like he had, I believe he had a massive heart attack and it was just so unexpected.

(44:03):
And it was the first time in my life that I remember that feeling of utter desolation over having lost somebody who was close, a friend.
He was so kind to me and he would just sit there and entertain all of my questions and just brash stupidity endlessly.

(44:26):
And with just very simple wisdom.
And of course, it felt really good to me, but I didn't have any idea what he was at the time.
But just that overwhelming feeling of loss when I found out that he had died and then everything just fell apart from there in my life.

(44:47):
Yeah.
Do you feel like if he had not died then that he would not have made that decision or that it would have gone differently?
It would have gone differently.
But the decision that, sorry folks, we don't see this as sustainable. Every man do the best you can.
It's not something he would ever have done.

(45:10):
He would have sacrificed himself.
And I'm going to suggest even what he saw as his family's future in order to not do that.
As a leader, he would not have been able to do.
Yes.
So what would have come of it?
I expect he would have orchestrated a pretty radical change of direction.

(45:34):
Do you feel like he was definitely headed that way though?
There was going to be a change or do you think there's a chance that it would have gotten past the hump?
And well, I would I would see those two as kind of together.
OK, he was he was pretty depressed the last month of his life.
I think he would have gotten over that.
He had an amazing resilience.

(45:57):
And I expect that, of course, this is totally just assuming.
Yeah.
But or hypothesis.
But I would see him as having taken those five churches and chartered a course that would gradually bring us into closer relationships with other conservative Anabaptist communities.

(46:24):
Got it.
And that he would have accepted that part of the collateral damage is that a good percent of people will opt out and move out.
Yeah. Yeah.
But the majority of us would have stuck with him.
Yeah.

(46:45):
Because that was the level of loyalty.
Yeah, because he was a fantastic leader.
He was someone that you wanted to follow.
Right.
So I think you were that that answer our question there.
It does.
It does.
I was suspicious that would be your answer.
And it's not like it's possible to know.
But right.

(47:06):
So and I think that you were you were talking about the difficulty of figuring out what to do next.
Right.
So I had been already dabbling in some questions of medicine, if you'll recall, I spent some time with Amish Dr.
John Kine.
Rings a bell.

(47:27):
My father encouraged that he wanted to see the Amish and Mennonites take take charge of our own health care.
And Dr. Kine was what what was his what did he do?
Who was he?
He was an Amish man and he had developed a phenomenal method of burn treatment.

(47:54):
Second and third degree burns.
He was achieving healing results without skin grafting that were totally phenomenal.
The medical establishment absolutely cannot match that.
And it has actually held true today.
There is a growing movement in the Amish Mennonite communities to treat burns according to the Kine protocol.

(48:23):
Is there like a book or a document or some place to look up what that is?
Yeah, I don't know how much you can find online.
Sure.
But I would I would be surprised if you look up John Kine.
Kine is spelled K-E-I-M.
Okay.
I'm going to look it up.

(48:44):
If you look up John Kine burn and wound therapy, maybe.
Yeah.
It would surprise me if you couldn't find something.
Oh, I'm going to try.
Yeah.
So I was I was actually training under John Kine when my dad died.
I would not hope.
So that has sparked in me an interest in medicine.

(49:06):
And I was headed towards leaving if the church is going to disintegrate anyhow,
just pulling back from any organized religion, pursuing a medical degree in college.
I was thinking maybe brain surgery or something like that.

(49:30):
Wow.
And just taking a different direction.
You're you're already thinking about this, not before your dad died.
No, after.
Okay.
So after he died, that's where your brain started to go.
After right.
Got it.
After the decision to disperse the communities and we were having to decide what to do.
Gotcha.
Okay.
And how old were you at that point?

(49:51):
I would have been 22.
Okay.
Just for a frame of reference.
So I I went and got my GED and did not.
So I got that far, but I did not get as far as applying at any colleges.
Was it difficult to get your GED?
Like how much education had you had?

(50:13):
I had seventh grade education.
Okay.
How was it to get the GED?
I just went in and set for the test.
Okay.
I mean, excuse me, but GED just isn't much.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Got it.
I actually had a similar experience now that I think about it.
So it isn't much and it doesn't do much for you.

(50:34):
Sure.
Anyhow.
So what happened is the rest of my brothers made the decision that they were going to
move back to Elmer, which is of course the church and tradition of our birth.
And I did not really want to, but it looked like it was going to be difficult for my younger

(51:03):
siblings, Solomon, Christina, and Abner who were not married.
There was some question of whether they would willingly go along and whether they would
be able to acclimate.
So based on that factor, I made the decision to go along.
To make it easier for your younger siblings.

(51:24):
Right.
Interesting.
And also because I had no clarity of what else to do.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
So it wasn't like I had a dream, I had a vision and I laid it down for them.
I was totally lost and I was not willing to carry the guilt of contributing to their further

(51:46):
disorientation when my older brothers had a very clear vision and purpose for the future.
That makes sense.
So that would then be stage three.
Back to Elmer.
Right.
How did stage two feel?
Like if just kind of that overall, like how did that stage feel for you?
Leaving out all the chaotic ending, you know, just.

(52:08):
Oh, it was awesome.
Like I said earlier, that's what that was what shaped and formed my identity.
That was like the ultimate in my experience on almost every level.
Yeah.
It felt like we were going to change the world.
We had the answers.
We knew what we were doing.

(52:30):
Remember, I told you earlier that the experience of discovering that, you know, my father is
above average.
Yes.
I think contributed to maybe a little bit of pride or hubris.
And I think that the years in Cookville did the same thing.
So it was a very energetic time.

(52:51):
Yeah, you could say it that way.
Yeah.
OK, so then back to Elmer.
Yeah, back to Elmer.
And that was a very dark time.
It was not a good time for me.
Everything felt foreign.
I did not feel at home there.
I did not relate well to the church experience.

(53:14):
And I went into very sunk into very deep depression.
Was there an element?
Because when you left Elmer, what effect did that have on?
I mean, you had so much family and friends and everyone you knew was there.
What effect did that have on those relationships?
They pretty well cut us off.

(53:37):
They saw us as very threatening influence.
OK, and then how did I mean that had to have been difficult, even though it was kind of buffered by this feeling of a mission of really doing.
Yeah, it was extremely difficult for my parents.
It was not a big deal for me.
OK, because there was enough.
There was so much happening.
Sure, sure.

(53:58):
And there were so many so many new friends and so much excitement that it was not traumatic for me.
How did the experience of going back?
How was that informed or formed by that split of having left?
Like, was it was it kind of was the reception a little bit cold?

(54:19):
No, they were they were extremely welcoming.
OK, they saw themselves as reaching out to the children.
The refugee children of the airing prodigal.
And so they were extremely welcome.
Got it.
And then they were puzzled why it was hard for us to integrate.
But it was hard.

(54:40):
Oh, it was it was terrible.
I feel very I feel sorry for my wife.
She wasn't excited about going there either, but she also did not have anything anything else to suggest.
Yeah. So what ended up happening is I threw all of my energies into business and my brothers and I,

(55:07):
not all of my brothers, but a few of us had a partnership and I'm selling metal roofing.
And that business did very well, but it took all of my time.
For example, I remember I would have had probably one and two children at home.
And there were days when I did not eat one meal at home with my wife.

(55:30):
I would get up before she did.
We'd go out to the shop, which was on the same property working.
She would bring me breakfast.
She would bring me lunch.
She would bring me supper.
And when I went to bed, she was sleeping.
So that wasn't every day.
That would have been an unusual day for that to happen.
Yeah. But for her to be sleeping when I got up or when I came to bed was not at all unusual.

(55:56):
Yes. And for her to have to bring me meals at work was not that unusual.
And it's not like it was necessary.
You were just sinking into the work. That's right.
Did it feel like you were escaping, escaping the darkness, the feelings?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I could. I could get excited about the work.
Yeah. Yeah, I wish it was extremely effective.

(56:17):
Yes. But it was especially brutal on my wife and the little children.
Yeah. And how long did that last for, that stage?
I'm going to say that stage was about probably about three years.
The last two years of life in Ontario were not that bad.
We had come to a decision of what we were going to do.

(56:40):
We were making our plans and I found a lot of subtleness in that.
You had a purpose again.
Well, my purpose was different than it had been. Making money just wasn't cutting it.
But that was kind of in lieu of a purpose because making money is never a purpose in itself.
At least it will never satisfy as a purpose.

(57:02):
It's far too often the chief goal.
True. But it doesn't satisfy. Maybe that's what I mean by purpose.
A purpose that you can believe in, that you can feel good about going towards.
You had a purpose again that you could feel good about.
Yeah.
And so you were back there for five years, mixed reviews on the time, transformation time. And then what?

(57:27):
So then we moved to Canaveral, Kentucky, where we live now.
And we're right, we're approaching the 20 year anniversary of that.
Does it feel like that whole thing, once you moved to Canaveral, that's one whole stage of life that you're still in?
That one chapter? Or does it feel like there was any big transition points in there?

(57:52):
Yeah, there's transitions in there.
So the Canaveral movement did not grow phenomenally like the Cookeville one of 1990 did.
But it did grow. The first people moved in 2004. We moved in 2005.
And it was not until 2012 that we started another community.

(58:20):
That's kind of how you measure growth in these small communities is once you get 20, 25 families, you branch out and do it over again.
In Cookeville, we've done that five times in the first five years.
And in Canaveral, we didn't do the first one until seven years in.

(58:44):
It felt like we were settling in and developing an identity. And our identity was very much patterned after the Cookeville movement.
We would have stated that, well, we're just trying to go back and undo the disintegration and moving away.

(59:06):
We're just going to pluck back in and keep going. Which you can't.
You can never take a five year break off for five years and then go back.
Yes. But that was at least the attempt. Sure. A starting point. Yeah.
So about two years, I was ordained as a minister or an elder, which was a big change for my life.

(59:32):
In 2012, some of us just a few highlights there in 2012, we started a new community.
And then the big pivotal moment was in 2016.
In 2015, I had brain surgery, which was big for me and my family, but not necessarily life changing.

(59:57):
I mean, that's a big bomb to drop. Brain surgery. That's not an everyday thing.
No, but it was it was awesome. I'd do it again if I had the opportunity.
What did you like about it?
Oh, it it totally changed, transformed my life.
I was having seizures. I couldn't keep my mind and my thoughts together.

(01:00:20):
I basically could not live a productive life anymore.
And they cut my head wide open and went in and took out some leaping blood vessels that I guess were abnormal from birth.
And I solved it. So happily ever after.
How long were you experiencing this before you figured out that there was something wrong?

(01:00:44):
I was experiencing it for over for over a year before I realized what it was.
It just got it got gradually worse.
What was it? What was it called?
Venus and Geoma would be the technical name for it.

(01:01:05):
Latin name. So brain surgery was a extremely positive experience in your life.
And so it was like the next day you were just like a like back to normal.
Well, it takes more than a day to recover from brain surgery. But yeah.
OK, well, that would make sense.
Yeah, I totally totally changed my life.

(01:01:27):
I never fully recovered.
My energy never came back to pre pre NGO my life.
And my memory and some of my cognitive abilities are still not what they should be.
But I'm OK with that.
OK, and that's what you were talking about earlier about your memory, I guess.

(01:01:49):
That's right. Interesting.
So that was in 2015 and 2016, one of the leadership team made a decision to move out.
And that was that was pretty big.
If he had died suddenly, it would have been hard, but we would have been fine.

(01:02:10):
But his decision to leave sparked a lot of questions.
What in the world is going on?
And there had been a lot of tension in the leadership team, which most people were not aware of.
And when he made the decision to opt out, we could no longer hide that.

(01:02:36):
And so over the next several years, the fallout from that just it kept coming.
So he moved a few more families moved a few more families left, a few more families left.
And by the time the chain reaction was over, we were down to instead of two communities, one community and three families.

(01:03:05):
You're saying one community with three families in it.
That's right. Got it.
Oh, that had to have been painful to watch.
Well, you were part of it, but choose a different word.
OK, that's a fair point.
That had to have been painful to live through.
That was bad. Yeah.

(01:03:28):
Let's see. That was that low point was reached in the summer of 2012.
That was pretty painful.
I'm sorry. I said that before, didn't I?
No, I mean, I think it bears saying a few times.

(01:03:50):
That was cause for a lot of questioning and what's going on.
What are we going to do?
And I don't think that we were ever down to only three families living in the community, but we were down to only three committed families.
And I think there was a stage when there were only four, only one or two other families there.

(01:04:17):
Is there a minimum number of families to for a sustainable community?
I'm going to suggest when you're under about eight families, it's pretty hard to keep things together.
Got it. And then it sounds like eight.
And then when you're over 20, that's when you're over 15 or 20, the model we're using becomes cumbersome.

(01:04:41):
OK. Yeah.
And the community is I mean, how is it just one plot of land or is it plots of land bought together or it's one plot?
It's 300 acres. OK.
With it's very much it's very much pattern after the cook.
You remember, right?
Right. Where everyone kind of bought a share of it, bought into it.
Everybody buys a share, but the deed is held by the community.

(01:05:04):
Right. One one major difference about Cainyville today versus the Cook Bill of the 1990s is that we have community owned businesses to where everybody works there.
So everybody that lives there works in businesses there.
That's right. And we work.

(01:05:25):
We don't have our own private businesses.
The community owns the businesses and then we all we divide the profit based on the hours we put in.
And I know you have like a whole jam honey bottling operation.
That's right. And like a farm like a country store type of thing.

(01:05:46):
We used to. Oh.
When we lost so many people, we had to shut down several businesses.
OK.
And the model where everybody works together is a recent introduction.
OK. Of our of our re our restructuring our our next phase.
It's it sounds like we're getting pretty modern times right now.

(01:06:09):
So what are the main like what would you say are the main businesses like what kind of like what's the shape of the industrial aspect?
So at this point, we are actually in the process of selling a lumber business because we judge ourselves to be too busy.

(01:06:30):
The lumber business is small.
Basically, we import tongue groove white pine from the northeast from Maine and stock it and then resell it.
Got it.
We're selling that, which is going to leave us with exactly one business, which is Spring Valley Farms, the Jams and the Deli.

(01:06:51):
And how does that business make money?
We buy fruit, mostly frozen fruit, and we hire other kitchens to make product for us according to our ingredients, our label, our recipe.
And then we sell that to grocery stores, little farmers markets and variety stores.

(01:07:21):
You're you're saying you sell it just mainly locally.
Most of our product goes within like 150 mile radius of us.
We have delivery trucks, maybe a third of it gets shipped out by freight.
And some of that goes as far as Maine, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma.

(01:07:45):
But the bulk of it would be within a few hours drive.
But there's not like some place that that individuals can buy like some sort of a fulfillment.
We have a retail shelf at Spring Valley for walking customers.
OK, OK, walking customers, not online customers.

(01:08:06):
We do it to be nice.
Got it.
Online.
What if I wanted to buy some of it?
How could I do it from Oregon from out here?
Google SVF canning or Spring Valley Farms.
OK.
And you can probably find somebody who will ship to you.
If you can't, you can always call us in order.

(01:08:27):
We'll pack it in a box and mail it to you.
And the person packing it will grumble all the way through.
Do you want these types of calls or is it kind of like it interferes with the business, the real business?
They're terrible.
They're a terrible pain.
And we lose money.

(01:08:48):
We lose the money on every box we mail out.
OK, fair enough.
I'm going to get my hands on some just because for the novelty of it, I'm sure they have cool looking labels.
Or why do people buy your product?
I don't know.
Our product is really not that special.
Oh, this is fantastic.
I mean, just to be honest.
Yeah.

(01:09:09):
Yeah.
Honesty is the best.
Our product is legitimate.
OK.
We don't put like junk into it.
Yeah.
But it's not special.
I'm sorry.
In reality, they're globally sourced ingredients.
The strawberries might come from Japan or China.

(01:09:31):
It happens.
How does it make you feel to be part to be integrating with a global economy?
It doesn't bother me at all.
I'm not sure there's there.
There's nobody I doubt where there's anyone in the world.
He's not impacted by the global economy.
There are people who pretend they're not.
Well, that's fine.
I pretend things to just not that one.

(01:09:55):
What is the current shape of the community of your of your life?
There's 10 families.
I think we're mostly happy.
We're still trying to sort out our identity and our direction.
Over half of those families have lived there less than two years.
Oh, at this point, I have a lot of hope and courage for our future.
But part of that, oh, that reevaluating where we're at.

(01:10:20):
Are you are you familiar with priority lists that change over time?
Yes, I certainly am.
Yes, sir.
OK, so imagine you make a list of goals and priorities and you come back 10 years later and you just realize, oh, I need to update this list.
And assuming the most important is on top of the list, you just realize that what was number one is now number five.

(01:10:48):
What was number two is no longer on the list.
And what may have been number 10 is now number one.
Yep.
That happened with me as a person and it happened with us as a group.
Over the course of just just recently or just kind of over the course of this time?
Well, especially that stretch from 2016 to 2022.

(01:11:14):
That's six years of basically continuous one family and then the next time that says, well, I love you all, but I don't see any future here.
I'm going to have to do something.
Hope you guys will do OK.
And so, yeah, we ended up reevaluating a lot of priorities.

(01:11:37):
And the we will be a horsepower off grid, simple living community that dropped way down in the priority list.
And interestingly, for all of us, I think mostly unstated the I don't want to move somewhere else and start over new relationships all over again.

(01:12:07):
Went like way, way up on the list.
That's interesting.
Of course it did.
Oh, excuse me.
A little bit of a sidetrack here.
But what are the statistics on marriage?
Second marriage is yes, they start with a with a tremendous disadvantage.
Go to go up to third marriage and it's much worse.

(01:12:29):
And I don't know the statistics, but my impression is first marriage is like solid 50 percent, probably way more by now.
Second marriage is like, you know, it doubles every time or halves.
You know, it's it's it's you double the statistics is does is that what you're talking about?
Right.
And so I looked at that and I said, why should I start life over again?

(01:12:54):
I mean, at least here I know what I hate about these people.
And we've got something we can work on.
Why start over?
Wow.
And so as much as anything that I think that ended up being what kept us together.
Wow.
There that is so profound.
I'm just thinking to all my much smaller scale relationship, learning experiences and everybody that you interact with is human.

(01:13:22):
At the end of the day, you're gonna be disappointed.
That's right.
So as part of our restart, rebooting, we reached out to a group of churches in Eastern Kentucky.
They're about two hours from us.
And we asked them if they would be willing to be our friends to help us learn how to do church and community in a way that actually is long term sustainable.

(01:13:56):
And they agreed.
And it has just it has been a tremendous experience.
We look to them as people who have a lot of wisdom, often more wisdom than we do.
And we ask them, they help us in decision making and they give us moral support.

(01:14:23):
And it's just it's just been it's been awesome.
And they are not super plain lifestyle people.
So in making that switch of priorities, sticking with the relationships that were still left, came way up high on the list.
Living off grid, horse and buggy went way down on the list.

(01:14:45):
Yes.
And developing healthy relationships with other groups went way up on the list.
So just out of curiosity, where does this other where does this group fall on the generally on the Anabaptist spectrum on the plane spectrum?
It would be Mennonite type on the non horse and buggy world.

(01:15:09):
They're they would be seen as as fairly conservative.
OK, for example, they carry cell phones, but no smartphones.
OK, they have Internet access in their businesses, but not at all times personally.
Sure.
Which in today's world, I guess it's pretty big.
They don't do any social media.
Like where do they come out of?

(01:15:31):
Are you familiar with the charity movement?
Yes.
OK, they would have their roots in the charity movement.
When the charity church is kind of disintegrated, as in split off into a lot of directions, this these would be part of the conservative let's pull things together group.

(01:15:52):
Got it.
OK.
I appreciate that oversimplification for my putting it in a box desire.
And this is where you are today.
Except today you're in Mexico.
Today I'm in Mexico.
Taking care of heavy things.

(01:16:13):
Yeah, I've been amazed at how I have personally been impacted by the things we went through and the failures of our lives.
A lot of people close to me would tell you that I am not the same person anymore.

(01:16:38):
I'm not near as I think you would remember me as fairly self-confident and aggressive.
And I am very much not that way.
Of course, I've experienced my share of failure.
Often it has felt like more than my share of blame.
We had for years a leader who was very aggressive and assertive.

(01:17:04):
Aggressive and assertive in the same way that my father would have been.
But without the ability to temper that with the people skills that my father had.
And this is your perspective of yourself.
I'm saying no, I'm saying that was not.
I'm not saying that was me.

(01:17:25):
I'm saying that was our leader in Canaan.
Oh, my goodness.
OK, I'm sure glad I asked that.
OK.
And so in reaction to that, I pulled the weight back.
OK.
He's not with us anymore.
But it's been very hard for me to so whatever talents that my father had that reside in me,

(01:17:50):
which some of them do not quite as intense, but there's residual parts of that has been very difficult for me to actually step out and say,
Hey, let's go, folks, we can do this together because I just lack a lot of self-confidence.
Why?

(01:18:11):
It feels like we did everything wrong, especially watching what heavy handed leadership that's done has made me just pull back and not want to replicate that.
So what are you doing now?
What's your mission?
Our mission as a group has not changed a lot.

(01:18:35):
And my mission as an individual has not changed a lot.
It's still it's still our hopes to build relationships together with other people and families in a close knit community where we work together, we play together, we worship together.
We live our lives together.

(01:18:58):
And an integral part of that is that we are there for the people who are looking for something.
The Michael Angries of 1990 still exist in other shapes and forms in the 2020s.
Yes.
Broken people.
And that we're there for them.
That's the goal.

(01:19:19):
So let's see.
How does that play out in real life?
Well, I have an example.
Yes.
Well, it wasn't Michael Avery in the 90s, but Ike, our oldest boy, you guys just made it possible for him to spend a summer experiencing that kind of a lifestyle.

(01:19:41):
Oh, that was fun.
That transformed him.
We want him back.
I expect that you'll end up with some of the younger ones.
I'm certain that he'll be back there when he's ready.
His life has gotten so busy.
He's he has grown up.
But there are other kids that I believe want that opportunity.
So I don't even think I have to say if you guys are still open to it.
But, you know, yeah, we love that a little bit more drastic, though.

(01:20:08):
We've had in the last year, we've had a flow of homeless people come through.
Oh, really?
Not something that we planned on, but there's a nonprofit in the town next door to us.
And they without us realizing it, started sending people our way.

(01:20:29):
This is a nonprofit that specifically reaches out to women, single, abused, homeless, pregnant, whatever the issue may be.
And the first one that he sent to us, which would have been about right at a year ago now, a little over a year ago, just came because she needed a place to stay.

(01:20:52):
And the interesting thing is she's still with us.
How did she find out or how did the organization find out that you were even there or an option?
I'm not sure, actually.
She just showed up one day.
Well, you know, she didn't just show up one day.
We got a call from Julie at Potter's Hope, which is a church run organization that reaches out to women.

(01:21:15):
We got a call from Julie asking if we would be willing to take somebody in.
So we did.
Of course you did.
She has slowly integrated.
We did not put any pressure, but she dresses more and more like we do.
At this point, she now works in the community business and she has her own house.

(01:21:39):
She's not a member.
She doesn't have that level of commitment, but she at this point seems to be very much headed that direction.
That was a positive experience.
There have been several other homeless women that we have sheltered over the year who have moved on.

(01:22:00):
The assumption never was that these people are coming to join us.
It's like somebody needs a house.
A refuge.
Right.
So we give them a place to stay until they get their life back together and move on.
But interestingly, about four months ago, we ended up with this lady.
She's 22 years old and she has five children.

(01:22:23):
One plus four.
No, she's 22 years old.
Oh, wow. I missed that.
Oh, my goodness.
She's started having children at like 15.
She has had an extremely traumatic life.
Well, they're all with one husband, amazingly enough.
But yes, she still has had a traumatic life.

(01:22:45):
Her husband, unfortunately, left her for an 18-year-old.
Idiot.
Yeah, he is.
Anyway, so he was 18 when he began his relationship with her.
So he's quite a bit older.
But anyhow, she's basically abandoned, but she's unwilling to divorce him because she likes him.

(01:23:10):
Oh, my goodness.
So there's very little money available for her.
She gets like food stamps and that kind of thing.
But in order to get serious money, she has to divorce him.
And then if there's no money coming from him, then the government will pay.
Yes.
So we took her in.

(01:23:32):
It was like, look, you've got to take her in or she's going to end up in a women's shelter kind of thing.
So she stayed in our house for a while.
Then we put her in a camper in our yard.
Then we put her into one of our empty homes, which you can imagine there's a lot of them around.
Yes.

(01:23:53):
But it had no electricity, no septic.
It wasn't great accommodation.
So we actually were in the process of moving a house trailer in for her.
But before we got that done, her house burnt.
She had a generator running to charge some batteries so she could charge her phone and the batteries overheated in the middle of the night and the house burnt.

(01:24:21):
But she and her children survived.
They got out.
Wow.
They lived with one of the other families in the community for about a week and a half.
And now I think just yesterday, they moved into their new house trailer.
It's been a really good experience for us and for her.
Interacting with people from, how do you say that, the lower strata of society is just, it's amazing.

(01:24:52):
Those lives are so shattered and broken.
And yet in some ways, there's more friendship and caring for each other than what the well-to-do you have.
So while this lady was staying with us, I watched her take her last $20 and give it to a guy, one of her friends, because he lived out of money.

(01:25:20):
He had a job, but he was out of money.
He had no gas money.
So she gave him her last $20.
I've never done that.
I've never done anything close to that.
And then guess what?
Like two days later, she's out of gas and she has no money.
And who do you think she calls?
She calls her $20 friend and he comes and picks her up and gets her right.
That's how their economy works.

(01:25:42):
That's right.
And Aaron, have you heard that the expression like attracts like?
Yeah, but I'm not real familiar with it.
Well, people are going to be attracted to people who are like them in those ways.
Somebody who is open and sharing and loving, they're not going to spend a lot of time around somebody who is closed and selfish that lives in that kind of economy.

(01:26:06):
Like attracts like.
And you say, I've never done anything even close to that.
That may be true.
You aren't her.
You're not in her situations.
But like attracts like.
You are around what you appreciate and vice versa.
Anyway, this is the thought I had.
Yeah.
For what it's worth.
Thank you.
On the list, on the list of important things, remains several.

(01:26:33):
One of them I told you, and that is make your relationships work instead of looking for new ones.
Another one is that in those making those relationships work means making them work very closely, sharing almost everything of our lives.
Also, way high on that list is that we are here for other people and that the message that Jesus brought is that there is hope for the poor.

(01:27:10):
And if we have any enemies, they're probably rich.
Sorry for that oversimplification.
Now that raises questions.
That is that is just very high on my list of goals.
And I would say as a community, our list of goals is that we will be there for the down and out, whether they're Christians or whether they're heathens.

(01:27:36):
If we cannot do that, then our religion is useless.
Yes.
Why?
Why do you want to live in such an integrated way with so many other people?
Because I do not know of any other way to come to know myself.
And I believe that's a large part of what I was born for, is to come not only to see myself, but to become a different person.

(01:28:05):
The person I was created to be, intended from the beginning to be.
Which is?
Which brings us back to that conversation you referred to that we had several years ago.
That if I put it off for this life, I'm going to get to pick it up on the other side.

(01:28:26):
And anything I've put off, I'm going to wish I hadn't put off.
It doesn't get easier.
What does that look like?
What do you mean, pick it up on the other side?
I don't believe in magic.
So I don't imagine that I can pray a special prayer and then because of that prayer, God will forgive my sins.

(01:28:49):
And then I can live my life in the same selfish, self-centered way I have up until that point.
But when I die, I get this miraculous stamp of approval or forgiveness and I can slide into eternal utopia.

(01:29:10):
That goes contra to everything I have ever experienced or seen about creation and our creator.
So what happens when you die?
I go to the other side.
And?
And that's about all I know.
I go to the other side and I meet my creator.

(01:29:33):
Ephesians says that we were specifically created for good works.
We were created to do good things and that we are called to walk in those paths, in that identity.
And so if I show up on the other side, the selfish, self-centered, small-minded person that I have insisted on being in this life,

(01:30:03):
then he's not going to give up on me.
Okay.
But he's not going to miraculously transform me any more than he miraculously transformed me in this life.
Remember, there's no maturity, no changing without suffering.
Choose your suffering, buddy.

(01:30:24):
That feels true.
And what bigger tragedy is there than to suffer but not grow?
And it happens all the time.
Yes.
Bitterness, resentment, fear, so much suffering, but no growing.
Yes.
Sorry, that's the preacher in me coming out.

(01:30:46):
Oh my gosh.
That is, you're preaching to the choir.
That is profound.
That all feels extremely exquisitely true to me.
And what you're describing, Aaron, it feels like you're describing reincarnation.
Tell me, can you explain the difference?
I believe in reincarnation.
Oh, well that was easy.

(01:31:08):
The incarnation is a term used by Christians to describe the son of God leaving his spirit,
nonphysical existence and becoming incarnate, becoming a human being.
Okay.
Yes.

(01:31:29):
That's the incarnation.
So all of us have experienced an incarnation.
That's when we were born.
Yes.
And so when we die, we believe that we will be resurrected.
And if that is not a reincarnation, I don't know what it is.
Okay.
So you believe in reincarnation singular, like there's only one.

(01:31:53):
There has not been a life before this and there will only be one other life.
Oh, there is only one life.
Okay.
Life does not stop at the grave.
It goes on on the other side.
And at some point we will be given a new body and that is a reincarnation.
But no, I don't imagine that you were my grandfather's puppy.

(01:32:19):
Mm-hmm.
Or your grandfather.
I don't imagine that either.
Yes.
But in this reincarnation, you're going to be physically reinstated into a three-dimensional
physical form and is it going to have the same characteristics as in laws of physics
and deterioration and the continuing cycle of life and death?

(01:32:40):
To me, that's nonsense.
But I'm sorry, I wish I could go back three seconds and take that back.
That is not nonsense.
Because I know you don't mean nonsense in that way.
I understand.
Okay.
So to me, that is not a tenable belief.
Yes.
But I sympathize with it because it's based on something that is intuitive to all of us.

(01:33:05):
We were created for a purpose that is higher than ourselves in our present existence.
Mm.
And that whatever choices we make in this dimension is going to impact what happens
after this.
Mm.
Whatever that looks like.
Right.

(01:33:26):
So the concept of endless reincarnation is attempting to make sense out of that.
I see.
But you have to remember, I'm a Christian, Michael.
I do remember that.
When I believe in reincarnation, I believe that as a Christian.
Mm.
And I have no interest in what is typically referred to as nirvana, some disembodied universal

(01:33:54):
consciousness.
Or purgatory?
I'm in Mexico in purgatory at the moment.
Fair enough.
They don't let me drink coffee.
I don't get no bacon.
I don't get no sausage.
Oh, you're coming out redeemed then.
Listen, if this experience that is not further my spiritual growth, then it's sure wasted.

(01:34:20):
Oh, I like that perspective.
I have a little bit of a throwback question a little earlier in the conversation.
How many kids do you have?
Ten.
So there's 12 of you living in a house, two-story house.
That's right.
Three-story.
I mean, it has a basement, but okay.
Now, how long did the mother with five children stay with you?

(01:34:41):
She slept in our house for four or five days maybe.
Okay, so not super long.
And she had a small, we had a small camper trailer that we put in our yard for maybe
about a month or longer, close to two months.
And during that time, she would have done her meals and her showers and stuff in our

(01:35:05):
house.
Do you know approximately how many square feet the living space of your house is?
It is about 1200 foot per floor.
Okay.
So you have a 2500 foot house, give or take, without even a thought.
You're willing to just be in that space with 19, almost 20 people.

(01:35:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So moving them into the camper helped.
It gave them a little privacy, but the children, they basically spent their waking hours with
us.
Yeah.
So it was a tremendous experience for our family.
Wow.

(01:35:49):
This is fantastic.
My daughters babysat those little children.
We all helped in training them.
We interacted with the mother.
It was just, it was good.
But we were also glad to move them on to another house.
Yeah, of course.
I love that perspective.

(01:36:10):
We're still just back and forth a lot.
I mean, she comes to our house a lot.
She'll show up in the mornings for coffee.
Yeah.
I'm sure you guys are a huge moral support to her.
Yeah.
It's been a very good experience.
Yeah.
So if you, if you could sum up who you are right now, like someone that didn't know you,
who are you right now in this moment in time?

(01:36:32):
How do you see yourself?
I'm not good at that.
Okay.
That's, that's a fine answer.
I'm a Mennonite minister.
I'm a father of 10 children.
Perfect.
Sorry.
What?
Don't apologize.
Okay.
Actually, you know what?
I'm not going to tell you what to do.
You do whatever you want.
I'm curious.
The first gut feeling you have, if you were to say what you're most afraid of, what is

(01:36:55):
it?
So this is not a good time to ask because I have a son who is struggling with what he's
got Lyme and some other associated disorders.
And he struggles with a lot of really deep depression.
And so that has totally absorbed my, my life for the last two months, maybe.

(01:37:23):
And so my, my worries and fears of the moment would center very much around what is our
future, is a path we have chosen a good path forward.
Yeah, probably as many of my worries for the future would be for the question of given
the upheaval and the trauma of the last eight years, how will our children, especially our

(01:37:49):
older children come through that?
I have a lot of hope, but our older children have suffered a lot of emotional and psychological
trauma.
Yes.
So when you, when you set your side tie as in, in relationships, you also can lose a
lot.

(01:38:10):
Yes.
So there's, there's very good reasons that people pull apart into their own little cocoons.
The closer you are in community with people, the more open you are to getting hurt.
That's right.
Yes.
And that's especially hard on young people.
And yet this is the life that you want.

(01:38:32):
Right.
So I think my positive Cookville experience is an anchor for me to fall back on that my
children don't have.
Right.
So Alan, go on.
You had one more question.
Yes.
If you had an opportunity to say one thing to whoever wanted to hear you, whoever was
listening, whoever, whoever needed just to hear a word, one thing to the world, what

(01:38:55):
would you say?
Oh, wow.
Um, I should have thought that through.
Well, what does your gut say?
What's the first thing that comes to your gut?
So my gut says that Jesus Christ is the answer and the reason most of us have walked away
from him and from him as being the answer has been because the witness of his children

(01:39:22):
has been so terrible.
But go back and read the gospel, read the New Testament and see an example of somebody
who lived his life to the fullest in service of others.
And if you follow him, you will never be sorry.

(01:39:43):
Beautiful.
Thank you.
I really appreciate you taking this time, Aaron, to catch up with me and to share your
story and I hope that we have an opportunity to do it again.
Yes, thank you.
Okay.
Hang on.
Now my turn.
Oh, sweet.
No, no, no, no.
Just a little bit here.

(01:40:04):
Okay.
So we are like, we have modernized, but we're not really modern.
Mm hmm.
And so I have no really good way of accessing your podcast.
Okay.
What is the chance that I could get you to take our talk today, whatever you get it boiled
down.

(01:40:25):
Yes.
And also the talks you have like with your wife, your dad, the people that I would care
about.
Yes.
Because of connection.
Yes.
What would it be like for you to put those preferably would be on CD?
Yes, but if not on CDs, then on a, what you call those little memory sticks.

(01:40:51):
Thumb drive.
Yeah, on a thumb drive.
Thumb drive would be incredibly easy and I will certainly do that, but I believe I can
make a CD happen as well.
I know a few people that like the old school more technology.
So let me see what I can do.
I will get you something one way or another.
Yeah, I would really appreciate that.
I will package everything that I have.
That way you can be the decider and some of them are decidedly from different worldviews.

(01:41:16):
I consider myself to be a worldview traveler.
Like I can just step between them and that's what I love to do.
It's just beautiful for me to see what the world looks like from each person's perspective,
but I'll get those to you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No problem.
Okay.
That would be tremendous.
So the only thing I am able to listen to is CD, but if it ends up in a thumb drive, I
can always get someone to transfer it for me.

(01:41:38):
I'm going to make it my mission to figure out how to get this burned onto a CD.
It should not be too hard.
I'll bet you I could get the stuff to do it from goodwill.
I'm going to try.
I accept the challenge.
I love this.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you, Michael.
All right.
Thanks, Aaron.
I'll talk to you soon.
Lord bless you.
You listen to the whole conversation.
That probably means you really enjoy looking through other people's eyes, exploring perspectives.

(01:42:04):
Well, if you are thinking of somebody who you think I should have a conversation with,
or if you have any kind of feedback, please don't be shy.
Let me know.
Shoot me an email, avremedic at gmail.com or message me on Instagram, emotionart underscore
just Michael.

(01:42:25):
The way I feel about it, every conversation is worth having and every human is beautiful.
You're a human, so I appreciate you.
All right.
Be good to yourself.

(01:43:05):
All right.

(01:43:33):
Thank you.