This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Episode 023 – Keith Green Acres: Our Crazy Cult Commune “Last Days Ministries”

September 20, 2023

T: Hi, I’m Tracey.

S: And I’m Sharon. And we are Feet of Clay…

T: Confessions of the Cult Sisters!

S: Today, we are going to talk about something that I find quite amusing and funny – and a little bit disturbing, and pretty whacky, whacky, whacky. And that is the commune that was set up by Keith Green in East Texas for our organization, Last Days Ministries. And because we are such great singers, we have another little intro song for you all.

T: Yes! But this time we have a little help from the karaoke track.

S: Here it comes folks!

…

Keith Green Acres is the place to be
Ranch house living is the life for me
Texas spread out so far and wide

…

[laughter]

T: Oh my god, that was my favorite show as a kid.

S: Oh really?

T: And of course, for you younger listeners…

S: Wait, wait, Tracey – Tracey – almost all our listeners are younger than us. Come on, you know that.

T: [sighs] yes, but thankfully there’s TV land and YouTube. So that TV show Green Acres actually played from 1965 to 1971 and is still available so you guys can go google it.

S: I love how you do your research. Really important.

[laughter]

T: I was barely alive. Barely alive. You know, I was a city suburban girl, not a farm girl by any stretch of the imagination, so this was such a ridiculous show. I loved it.

S: I loved it too.

T: You know, when we were getting ready to do this, you had referenced Green Acres before.

S: Yeah. Green Acres.

T: And do you know – this was one of those duh, brain fart moments in that I always thought it in my head, yeah, Green Acres because it was these city people coming from California to Texas, not putting together that it was Keith Green that made it all the more pertinent to Green Acres. Oh my god, that’s hilarious.

[laughter]

T: So brilliant.

S: Yeah, come on man. We gotta do the word play, girl. Every time. We gotta do the word play.

T: Oh my god, and I was thinking that would have been a great reality show – and of course that was before the days of reality shows taking over the airwaves, but if there was video footage of you guys coming from California? I – sign me up.

S: Oh holy shit, it was quite a sight to see, and yes if we had video footage – totally insane stuff we’re going to talk about. Visuals would be great. I think the ministry moving to Texas also had a lot in common with the 1991 movie, City Slickers with Billy Crystal?

T: That was very worldly of you, Sharon. But I did see the previews so I did know what you’re talking about.

S: Alright, so like, you were a city girl, definitely. You were and you still are. Not me. Not me at all. My early childhood was air force bases, moving back and forth, but then we would land in the suburbs, and then when I was in sixth grade we moved up to the foothills above Tucson, so there’s lots of open desert and the mountains, and it was really kind of borderline rural. I’ve always preferred being in nature; being out on the land, as opposed to cities and all the concrete. I want to see a horizon with trees, not buildings.

T: Yeah, but you guys are moving from California and after our interview with Dawn – people can go back, we’ll put that episode in our show notes – she mentioned being in the California area, which was not rural, Sharon.

S: No it wasn’t. It was neighborhood.

T: I know! Suburbs, like what I’m talking about. So I am very curious on the dynamics of what it was like in the suburbs of Woodland Hills California before you guys decided to move to Texas.

S: So, when Keith asked me to join Last Days it was located in Woodland Hills, that’s Southern California, and we were really an interesting collection of semi-hippies. We were living together in a whole bunch of houses in this modest neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley, so it’s tight density. It’s a neighborhood of small houses. That just felt really jammed in, too close together for me.

T: Were you guys called Last Days Ministries at that time? Did you have an official name?

S: Oh yeah, yeah. It was Last Days Ministries. In fact, originally it was Last Days Evangelical Association. I think that even stayed the legal name, but that didn’t trip off the tongue as easily as Last Days Ministries, so… It was a DBA.

T: So do you think the move to Texas was a part of the whole End Times concept of how you all needed to go into a compound since you were outgrowing Woodland Hills?

S: I don’t know that it was really totally that. I guess there were a variety of factors that led Keith to want to make this move. We were overrunning this neighborhood right, it’s very weird. You’ve got all these young kids, teens and twenties, and I imagine it would just have been a matter of time before there were some zoning complaints from the neighbors. So that might have been a factor.

T: [laughing] So you don’t know if there were any zoning complaints? Because I can believe there were definitely some zoning complaints.

S: Don’t know. I don’t know. Another thing that was probably a factor was that particular area of East Texas – there were already some other Christian musicians and authors and ministries in the area. Kind of like turning into this little mecca. And then of course is the crazy idea of getting ready for the End Times, and waiting it out for the Rapture. Keith talked about the Rapture. We believed in it, literally, which is right now just – how did we ever think that was real? So, being self-sustaining and being off the grid, if Armageddon’s coming or whatever – it’s all totally ridiculous. I don’t know, maybe the idea of feeding ourselves off the land was appealing so I don’t know how the others felt about the idea of moving to some big ranch in Texas, but I was excited about it. So Keith bought this land from a guy – in fact, his stage name was Red Shepherd. He was an actor, he was a singer – he was in the Broadway musical Hair. It was perfect; he had this thick, bushy red hair. What was it? [singing] long beautiful hair, shining, gleaming – go listen to the soundtrack.

T: Very good! I also wasn’t allowed to see or hear that musical because that was also worldly, but yes, he had the perfect hair for that.

S: So Keith kind of strongarmed Red into believing that God wanted Keith to have this property.

T: Yees. So, Melody does briefly describe this story in her book No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green – again, in our show notes – but she does this whole haha, isn’t Keith intense, he just drives up to this guy’s house and knocks on the door and basically says, God wants you to sell this property to me. He pulls the God card. What she completely leaves out of that story is that years later, the same brother – she doesn’t even mention his name in the book No Compromise…

S: So disrespectful.

T: It is, because he would later move back to the ministry with his wife and eventually his daughter, and they lived in a trailer on the back property. It was actually the next-door neighbors to my trailer when we got married, and when you thinking about him owning this whole property, and then you look at him coming to live in this trailer – it was a step up from three high bunks for me, but I often would just think about how he felt about that decision. I will just say this – I know I’m kind of fast forwarding this story a little bit – but I ended up living in that trailer next door to him during the very end after you’d been kicked out, and he was hopping mad. Hopping mad at what was happening to the ministry and the direction we were going – but okay, let’s rewind. Rewind back to when we first got the property.

S: Come on back. Bring it back, girl. Well, the property was located technically in Garden Valley Texas. That’s literally a four-way stop sign in East Texas between the small towns of Lindale and Van.

T: It’s actually referred to as a crossroads.

S: Really? Like, officially?

T: Yep. Officially a crossroads.

S: Again, I love that you do your research. Thank you. I think that it was about 300 acres to start – I might have that right; I might have that wrong, I’m not sure. We eventually did buy up other land that was adjacent and I think we had almost 500 acres in total. One of the things when we pulled up – there’s sort of a landmark. Everybody in the area knew it, it’s this giant, wooden water wheel. This huge thing, out in this field. Like, why is it even there?

T: [laughing] out in the middle of the field. Yes, and some listeners may even recognize that water wheel because many group pictures were taken there.

S: Yes.

T: Last Days Ministries staff; it was published in the newsletter; all of our ICT schools. There was no water though, was there Sharon, out at the water wheel?

S: No. It’s out in the middle of this hayfield, this little hill. There’s no stream; there’s no pond; it’s totally out of place – which I kind of think it’s a little symbolic, right? We’ve got this ragtag group of Jesus freaks moving into East Texas farm country so yeah, it’s totally out of context.

T: A great intro to the Keith Green Acres. That would be a great intro to the reality show. A water wheel that doesn’t have any water.

S: No water.

T: And when we were getting ready for this, I remember that was struck by lightning, do you remember that?

S: Oh! Yeah!

T: And I think in 1984 there were still being photos taken there, so it had to have been after 1984.

S: Wow.

T: Yeah. So we were so conditioned to look for signs, and I wonder if that was a sign of things to come. There was lightning striking, and then a tornado – but again, getting ahead of myself.

[laughter]

S: Oh my gosh. Well, suffice it to say, Keith has all these competing ideas when we move, and the craziest one is to become this almost self-sufficient, living off the land commune. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. We’ve got these mostly from Southern California, city and suburb folks – again, half of us are teenagers, some in their twenties. We have no idea about this stuff. No fucking clue. Part of it’s the whole Last Days End Times things, but it’s totally half-assed survivalist mentality, not prepared at all.

T: You know – and this is a message that really struck me, because that was the time of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

S: Ohh. Hal Lindsey.

T: Yes. The most popular book at the time. As a matter of fact, that is the one reason I graduated high school early.

S: Really!

T: Because some of the early predictions were that Jesus was going to come back as early as 1982.

S: I did not know you graduated early for that!

T: You didn’t know that?

S: No, I didn’t.

T: I did, because I thought I don’t want to be in high school when Jesus comes back – this epic, historical event. I need to get out and make sure I’m winning souls to Jesus. In our youth group we had the movie A Thief in the Night, and A Distant Thunder; all of those were End Times movies that predated the Left Behind series, that a lot of people in our younger audience will be familiar with. And you need to google A Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder, because I’m telling you they are some terrifying stories of what the tribulation will be like, and that persecution.

S: Do you remember that Larry Norman song I Wish We’d All Been Ready?

T: Oh, yes!

S: Remember that?

T: That was the soundtrack to the movie A Thief in the Night.

S: Oh wow! I don’t know if I saw the movie but man, that song – creepy stuff.

T: Yes. It gives nightmares to people because it’s every horrible thing you can think of that’s going to happen in this persecution. So yes, it was the genre of the time, and I can see that Keith would be – we’ve gotta be in a compound to protect ourselves.

S: Yeah. No, I just really don’t know how strong that thinking was. But I do know he got all worked up when Russia invaded Afghanistan – when was that, 1980 or 79, I think somewhere in there, so that was a sign definitely, that the end was near.

T: Very much a sign that the end was near!

[laughing]

S: Alright, so when we got there, what was on the property was this big long ranch house. It had three bedrooms, three bathrooms, this small office which one of the walls had this inset giant fish tank. There was a huge living room that has this stone fireplace, and oh my god Tracey, the worst – remember the bright red carpet? I mean, whoever thought that was a good idea, I do not know. It was horrible. Horrible!

[laughter]

S: So there’s also this big giant kitchen, and big laundry room, and attached garage. And the master bedroom because it was the biggest; that became the sisters’ dorm. We had three high bunkbeds. There was at least a dozen of us, and two single moms, so we had two babies about a year old in there with us as well. The smaller bedroom right next to it; that was Keith and Melody’s, and Josiah was in there with them, and Melody was pregnant at the time with Bethany. Upstairs, to get upstairs you took this really narrow spiral staircase from the dining area up into this bedroom. It had a full bath and an open balcony – I guess that’s probably how they got their furniture up there. They must have had to lift it up from the outside because you couldn’t take anything up the spiral staircase. And that was the brothers’ dorm. The laundry room becomes the art room, with drawing tables and typesetting machine, and the garage is where we set up the printing press and the collating equipment. We used these big, black plastic sheets or tarps to create a dark room, with lots of duct tape, and then there were farm kind-of-like outbuildings. An equipment shed, a workshop where you could park tractors and stuff, and then there was another barn that had a hayloft – that living room; that was used as a combination of an office and a place to have our bible studies and worship time. We had tables and desks with our computers and mailing equipment and just general files and office stuff, but it’s also where we had our bible studies. We’d sit cross legged on the floor, just like good old hippies. That’s what we were. We had so many people in that house – I mean, talk about violating building codes. So you’ve got this septic system that’s designed for a three bedroom house and there’s like, more than 25 people in there – the three high bunkbeds, those were built by the brothers with plywood, just cheap mattresses. Not comfortable at all. You’ve got this little shelf at the end of your bed that was your personal space; maybe like six inches deep and the width of your bed.

T: Yep.

S: Remember in the bathrooms, you could never flush the toilet if all you did was pee. You could only flush it if you took a shit, because otherwise we’d flood the septic system.

T: That is true, yes. And there was a sign to remind us of that; of course they didn’t use the word shit. We referred to it as one and two. I can’t remember the little rhyme.

S: Yeah, you’re right. There was some sort of little rhyme.

T: There was a rhyme; if it’s yellow, let it mellow;

T & S: if it’s brown, flush it down!

T: I am so proud of myself. That was not in our show notes everybody; that came to me just now.

S: That’s just like pulling back from the decades, so maybe we do have a few braincells left.

[laughter]

T: I’ll just say, it did take me decades to learn to flush the toilet after I went number one.

[Sharon laughs hysterically]

T: Because it’s such an ingrained habit – even my kids would be like, who didn’t flush the toilet?? And I’d just keep my head down – probably me.

[laughter]

S: Oh my goodness. You were there when the shower limitations were on, so why don’t you describe shower protocol.

T: The shower limitations were always on. When I came we were still crowded in the ranch house and it still was the kitchen, and it still was where we ate our dinner, and the showers were five minutes of running water.

…

S: No, nope, nope, nope. Tracey made a teency mistake about those shower rules. That five minutes she mentioned – that was the TOTAL time allowed, start to finish, from when you took off your clothes, to when you got out and towelled off. The running water? That was limited to only two minutes. Try that next time you’re in the shower, folks! And most of us at Last Days – we were permitted to shower only every other day. Maybe we were fulfilling that bible verse, 2^nd Corinthians 2:15 – for we are a fragrance of Christ to God. We were fragrant, that’s for sure.

…

T: So a lot of people would learn to soap up, turn the water off, do your stuff – of course, if you remember from purity culture, I was like, I don’t know how people are masturbating in bathrooms with this limitation, because it wasn’t you get to go into the bathroom and close the door; you shared it with 12-15 people who were in and out. That was the rule. So you cover yourself in a towel but you had NO privacy.

S: No, none.

T: Even on the toilet.

S: No privacy, ever.

T: That’s the way it was.

S: That’s the way it was.  Yep. Alright, so if you’re gonna run a farm, you gotta buy the animals and the equipment and all kinds of stuff, right? This was another aspect that Keith loved. I mean, he LOVED auctions, whether it was cows or horses or farm equipment, or printing equipment, or office stuff – he was just so into auctions. I’m going to say things that are going to be culturally offensive to somebody but oh well. He was really proud of his Jewish heritage, and he would make jokes, these stereotypical jokes. One of his favorite ones was, do you know why God made Gentiles? Someone’s gotta pay retail.

T: Oh wow.

S: Right? And then when he would negotiate, whether it was new equipment, or vehicles, or estate sales – I don’t care what it was. But if he’s negotiating, it was embarrassing to be with him, because he would push so hard, and it seemed to us that sometimes he was trying to take advantage of people, and it just didn’t feel good. I can’t remember if it was Wayne, or if it was Martin, but I know we were together somewhere, where Keith was trying to buy something. One of them, either Wayne or Martin, pulled him aside at one point and said Keith, man, you gotta stop. Stop trying to Jew them down! So again – sorry it’s offensive, but that’s what they called it, and that’s what Keith said. Yeah, he was proud of it, I’m gonna Jew ‘em down. It was embarrassing, because he was so pushy and rude at times, and really proud of it. We’d go to these auctions, and he would get swept away. It’s funny, because he’s got this part of him that’s always gotta get a good deal, right. Pay the lowest price. But sometimes at auctions he’d get swept away in all the excitement, and sometimes he’d keep bidding on things when he absolutely shouldn’t. I remember this one auction – it’s like, we don’t need horses; we’ve already got horses on the farm. But these horses come into the sales ring, and he starts bidding on them. I’m like Keith, don’t do that. One of them is this quarter horse, and it’s totally buck kneed and I can tell the horse is lame, and I tell him don’t, don’t buy this horse, but he insisted on it. He kept bidding it up, and sure enough, that horse comes back to the farm, lame, and couldn’t be ridden.

T: Oh no!

S: There was one other – this bull, he bought a Hereford bull that had this horrible case of pink eye. He’d get caught up in these things, and buy stuff he shouldn’t have bought. It was awful.

T: Did they have any kind of papers that showed they were medically examined?

S: No, no, it’s auctions. It’s buyer beware. It’s as is, right there, and when you can see that the horse is lame, and you can see that the bull is sick, and you’re buying it anyway. It’s just ridiculous.

T: That’s what happens in Keith Green Acres, when certain people go in, and everyone is probably laughing under their breath at you all.

S: Oh my god.

T: You recently showed me a photo of you at one of those auctions, and I’m going to put it on Instagram – Feet of Clay.cultsisters, and you explained that you were buying that bull and loading it on the trailer…

S: Wait, I didn’t buy the bull. Keith bought the bull.

T: Okay, well why are you part of this? Are you like, the most savvy animal person at this point?

S: I guess I am. I don’t know. I don’t know why I was there. I was there.

T: You explained you had been looking at the bull that had just been loaded onto the trailer, and your soon-to-be husband (so you’re not married yet)…

S: Right.

T: …he’s holding Josiah.

S: Right, Keith’s son Josiah.

T: And I notice two things about that phono. You look really worried; not at all happy.

S: Yeah, I wasn’t. I was probably thinking why on earth did Keith buy this bull with this major eye problem?

T: And you knew that there was an eye problem?

S: Oh yeah, you could see it. You could see it. it was horrible.

T: Oh god. And the other thing is, you’re really skinny, Sharon!

S: Yeah, I was. I was kind of almost skeletal skinny. I was 18 years old, that was shortly after Keith had set up my engagement to Martin, the third elder of the ministry, and I was so incredibly stressed and traumatized – but I didn’t even know it. I couldn’t eat; I lost a ton of weight. I look at that picture too, and I’m like, holy shit. That’s just awful. Folks can hear more about that in the interview I did with Troy and Brian, I was a Teenage Fundamentalist, and also more on the Virgins and Volcanos series. We’ll put those in the show notes, too.

T: Yeah, so I take it Melody is not at these auctions buying animals?

S: I don’t think so. I mean, it’s possible she came out once in a while, but I don’t think so.

T: In any of the pictures that we’ve been able to find, I haven’t seen her. It is a blurry picture, but your face is like, oh my god, what are we doing. Unfortunately there’s more.

S: Yeah. Before we get more into this, I gotta give a disclaimer and a warning. There are examples of some pretty awful treatment of animals. Some of the stories – they’re crazy, they’re ridiculous, and on the one hand, it makes me laugh at the stupidity of everyone – especially Keith, but all of us. But also, I’m truly horrified by some of these things. Especially in post LDM life, my career shifted towards animal behavior and animal welfare, and Tracey, I’m literally just disgusted and sick to my stomach as I think back on certain situations. Again, heads up to listeners.

T: Yes. Part of our parallel journey that we haven’t talked a whole lot about is, as a child I was so very, very sensitive to animals. I wanted to be a vet from when I was a real little girl. I was kind of known in my family for causing a scene in Spain during a bullfight, because I was horrified at the treatment of the bull. I stood up in the middle of the bullfight and started screaming at the cheering that was happening for when they speared the bull, and my parents were mortified and embarrassed.

S: Oh my god, I didn’t know about that.

T: No, I know! You didn’t know that. And you know, my dog was my world, and that was one thing that we don’t talk about a whole lot, but it was Christianity and the doctrines of Christianity that actually drove that sensitivity and love for animals out of me. It may not be everyone’s experience, but one of the teachings was they don’t have souls, and you need to be putting your emotions towards human beings who have souls and are dying and going to hell. So there was definitely a turning of my heart I did away from animals. Some of these stories you’re about to share I think show that – that lack of consideration for the animal kingdom.

S: Yeah. And one other thing we should make clear – this is over 40 years ago, and we might have a few details slightly off, but the general gist of all this stuff I’m going to talk about is solid. If there are any former LDMers out there and you want to contact us with corrections, or more stuff, we are all ears. So okay. We wound up with this crazy assortment of ranching and farming endeavors, right? Beef cows; dairy cows; chickens; hay baling; a fruit orchard; planting vegetables – well actually, not even vegetables. I remember planting potatoes. I don’t know why not a vegetable garden. The potato planting happened pretty soon after we got there, and I’m not even sure if it was the right time of year. The dirt there – it was red, iron ore clay, so hard to dig. It was just awful.

T: That dirt is so hard. I’ve started to get into gardening now in my later years, and the thought of having to go into that earth, without bringing in the right soil to treat it, when you guys aren’t knowing what you’re doing – I can’t even imagine.

[laughter]

S: Well, I hated it. It was all of us, or almost all of us were out there. We’re digging – this was down the bottom of that hill, below the water wheel, if you remember where that was? Down the side and bottom of the hill. So it’s hot. It’s horrible. Let’s say we took 100 pounds of potatoes, right? Somebody cut them up into quarters, and we have to dig all these holes, and we planted them all. Then sure enough, some time goes by and you start to see them sprouting and growing – yay. So I think it was a few months (again, I don’t know for sure) and now we have to all go out there and dig into this fucking ground again to bring in this bountiful harvest that God has provided. So we pulled the potatoes out of the ground. They’re not really big. You buy bigger ones in the grocery store.

T: I was going to say – that you even got potatoes surprizes me.

S: We did! And we’re putting them into buckets or bags or something, and we bring them up into the ranch house, and we harvested almost exactly as many pounds of potatoes as we had originally planted.

[laughter]

S: So just put the potatoes into the ground for three months for safekeeping, folks, to make sure nobody stole them. And that ROI – that pretty much sums up all the farming and self-sustaining efforts at Last Days Ministries.

T: And did you realize it at the time that hey, this is not the best use of our time?

S: Oh, some of us absolutely did. I don’t think it was every fully admitted to. I think there was just kind of a quiet little pivot away, but yeah, it was like a running joke. Then somebody got the idea of fruit trees. I think it was peaches mostly; maybe there were others.

T: It was a peach orchard.

S: Dozens of peach trees planted. Dozens of them. And they were fucking pathetic, Tracey. They were like these sticks that barely grew. They barely had any leaves on them. I don’t even know if they survived – they certainly did not thrive. It was just so pathetic. I don’t know if they ever even fruited.

T: They did.  Those were as you came up the driveway. They were neatly planted; I have to give them that. They were pathetic, and I think the story when I arrived was, it takes five years or two years or three – some years – before fruit trees will fruit, so there was still this thing of it’s gonna come, it’s gonna come, we’re gonna have these amazing peaches! And I do remember – someone can check me if I’m making this up in my dreams – that one year there was a small basket of a couple of peaches that were very small.

S: For acres!

T: Yes, for acres. And I remember feeling a little honored that I got to taste it. I don’t remember it being anything spectacular. Peaches would be awesome – to have fresh peaches? It would have been awesome. But we never had them.

[laughter]

S: Oh man.

T: So, 1979 is when you moved, right?

S: Yep, 79.

T: By early 1982, the remnants of the compound and the vibe of the compound was still very much at play. You had abandoned I think, by that time, some of the less optimal farming practices.

S: Yeah.

T: And I worked – thankfully for a very short amount of time – in the ranch house kitchen, which was really run like a prison kitchen, and I am not exaggerating. It was like a prison camp.

S: Oh wait, I gotta tell you – everybody who came in the beginning, you got put in the kitchen, because that was to test your – I don’t know, your humility, or something like that.

…

S: Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. This time I’m the one who got it wrong. Not everyone who first arrived at Last Days had to be humbled by working in the prison kitchen. Upon further reflection, we realized that it was only the women who needed these important lessons in humility, because … hmmm … hmmmm – Yep, you guessed it folks. The Patriarchy!

…

S: And I remember in California when I got there I had to work in the kitchen. I had to grate potatoes, and I remember feeling incensed. Like, I’m smart. I can type really fast. I can do office work. I can do math. Why am I grating these potatoes? Then I started singing a song to myself – people who were Christian will remember this one. [singing] Greater, greater, much much greater, greater greater…

[laughter]

S: That was how I got myself through it and was convinced God was trying to teach me humility. Anyway, I interrupted you. I’m sorry. Go back to your prison kitchen story.

T: My prison kitchen story! Well it was the same kind of story. So I had, for whatever reason, I was young but I was very adept in the kitchen. I had won, I think for two years in a row, the Homemaking Awards of my school. I used to make gourmet meals and help my family out, so I was incensed.

[laughter]

T: I was assigned to work in this kitchen, and literally the instructions – if we tell you to go get a carrot, that’s what you do. You go get the carrot, then you come back and you wait for further instructions. You don’t slice the carrot; you don’t dice the carrot; you don’t do anything to the carrot until you’re told. It was a test of obedience, and I’m like oh my god, I don’t know where I have fallen.

S: You know that whole BITE model of cults, and people wonder was this a cult back then in those days. One of the things is your behavior is controlled, and if you can’t fucking control the behavior of someone picking up just one carrot and taking it where you tell them to …

T: One carrot. So of course, all of this sense of being incensed was my pride, so I’m like okay, I gotta be willing to be humble. So then the person in charge trots me out into the garage and shows me what seemed to be to be miles and miles and miles of jars, but I’m sure it was just one wall.

S: Of jars? What kind of jars?

T: Of jars that had canned food that had been there since 1945 I’m sure – they probably weren’t quite that old.

S: Oh my god, I remember that now!

T: So this was my opportunity – city girl here. I have never canned food. I am told that it’s my job to go through these rusted, decaying – you can see through the glass that they’ve been rotting for a very long time, but God forbid we throw the jars away because we’re good stewards of God’s money, so I have to chisel the top of the rest of the metal part off and empty the contents, and clean out and save the jars.

S: Ohh, how gross. Oh my god.

T: I did everything to keep from throwing up, and I also sang, Sharon. This is probably why we got moved out. I was like, they will not break me. They will not break me. I will do this cheerfully. And the next day I was moved to a better job, so I guess I passed.

[laughter]

S: Congratulations, you passed the test.

T: I did. Did you ever go grocery shopping? To basically supply the prison kitchen?

S: I do remember going into town a few times. I’m not totally sure if it was when we were still in town in California, or when we had gotten to Texas, but going to the back of the stores, you’re talking to the produce manager and you’re asking to salvage the stuff that’s so bad they’re about to throw it in the dumpster. So you’re pre-empting dumpster diving to bring this stuff back, clean up and eat. It’s oh my god, oh my god.

T: Yes, our menu one day in the school was, they opened the refrigerator and said what can we make tonight? We had had fish sticks the night before, and so the idea was to make fish stick soup.

[laughter]

T: I remember like, okay, alright, I can do this. At least they’re being good stewards of God’s money. Which you’ll get into – meanwhile they’re buying other things while we’re eating fish stick soup.

S: Oh my god, you’re so right. You’re going to have to recycle fish sticks because there’s not enough money for decent food, and you’re going to have to bring back half rotted crates of produce before they get thrown away, but we got money for planes, and we got money for – yeah, stuff. I’m going to share about one of those coming up that just blew my mind, but okay.

T: Yeah.

S: Alright. Animals. Cows. Dairy cows. Again, probably from auctions, we had three dairy cows. Two Holsteins – those are the black and white ones, and one Jersey, soft brown. The younger Holstein, the younger smaller of the two – I have a feeling she had never been milked before, because she would try to kick the shit out of anybody who got near her. So a couple of the brothers take a rope, and they rope one of her hind legs, just above the hoof, and they throw the end of the rope up over a rafter in the barn, and tie it up high so that she can’t kick and that’s how she was milked. It’s just crazy. It’s just crazy.

T: I think there’s a milking picture. We’ll have to find it.

S: Yeah, there’s definitely a milking picture. So we had fresh milk, and that was pretty cool. We churned butter, I actually made butter myself, in a butter churn. That was kind of interesting. With the cream we’d also make fresh ice cream, and Keith loved the ice cream. He was always into let’s figure out new flavors, so we’d have butter pecan, and mint chocolate chip, and amazing ice cream. There were times though, he’d also be talking about needing to repent for his gluttony and for gaining weight, because he loved eating ice cream so very, very much.

T: Wow.

S: At least one of them was pregnant and had a calf there, and one of the sisters Meredith named this little calf Sarah. I think I’ve got a picture of me with the calf Sarah, and actually Bethany. So that would have been before the plane crash, of course. I don’t think Keith realized – maybe none of us realized – that in order to continue giving milk, the cows actually need to get pregnant again, they need to be rebred and have another calf and maybe just the hassle or whatever, but at some point the dairy cows were kind of out. Were they still there when you came in 82?

T: [laughing] So you forget that I’m not a farm girl. I did notice cows, but at that time I couldn’t say whether they were dairy cows or beef cows, because I would not have known the difference. Especially if they were brown. There were definitely no Holstein cows when I arrived.

S: Okay.

T: And we did not have ice cream, so if that’s a clue, then probably not.

S: Okay. Alright. Probably they were gone.

T: And I do remember in the prison kitchen, there being a weird thing about beef being in the back freezers in the back garage, and it would be not until later when I hear these stories because it wasn’t explained, it was just like, you can’t touch that. And now, it’s like, is this a horror film? What’s in the freezer?

S: [laughing] What’s in the freezer? Don’t go near the meat in the freezer! Oh my god. Okay, well.

T: It sounds really suspect, doesn’t it.

S: It really does! Okay, so that brings us to the beef cows. I’ve already told you about the bull with the chronic pink eye that Keith bought, after buying the cows with calves and some heifers, so okay if you’ve got to keep the cows breeding if you’re going to keep on having more. So we had maybe a couple dozen of those beef cows. At some point someone realizes that if you leave nature alone, all those little boy calves are going to grow up, and we’re going to have a bunch of bulls. There were two brothers who seemed to have, or indicated that they had some sort of farm or ranch experience. Honestly, I don’t know if they did or not. Dan and Dennis I believe were the two. They very well may have; I just don’t know. But there was this neighbor, a very wealthy Quaker named Dale Brown, older, super nice, super patient, and of course I’m sure he was always scratching his head about us, wondering who the heck we were!

T: Probably! Yes, the Browns lived in the brown house. They were always very generous, it was this huge gorgeous stone house with a  built in swimming pool, and they would often open it up to us longer term staff people to go use it for the day, and you Sharon – you were married in that house.

S: I was married in that house. Leonard Ravenhill performed the wedding ceremony in Dale Brown’s big, giant house. Yep.

T: Eventually Last Days would own that house, they would buy it and it would become a home for unwed mothers. I think that happened after we left.

S: We owned it before we left.

T: Did we own it before we left?

S: Because remember it was called Father Heart, because it was for unwed mothers.

T: Yeah, I thought that was still under the generosity of the Browns, so…

S: Well maybe, I don’t know, but I remember that living room, that same living room that I got married in, was the living room where we had that – I’m just going to call it the come to Jesus meeting with Melody when Wayne and Kath and me and Martin confronted her about what she was trying to do with funds – anyway. Another story. But yep.

T: But the point is they were very generous. I hope they didn’t get taken for a ride on that sale.

S: Right. So we got these two brothers, Dennis and Dan. I think they had some experience, but whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t quite enough. So they figure with the younger bull calves, the real young ones, that they can band them. This banding is where they put a very tight rubber band on the scrotum above the testicles, and the idea is that cuts off the blood supply and the tissue dies and atrophies and gradually falls off. I mean, it’s just horrible. Even saying it makes me feel horrible. And here’s something that if possible, is even worse. So there’s a couple of older bull calves. I don’t know if they were maybe a year and half old, or a year old or something. And Keith had bought these panels and squeeze chutes to move these cattle around. The decision was made that they are going to put these two young bullocks in the chute and castrate them with a knife. Now, how the hell they thought this was okay, I will never know. Apparently the first one supposedly goes okay – if you can call it that. Again, just horrible and awful. That first one was a little black one. The second one was a bit bigger, he was a brown brindle, and as they’re slicing the scrotum, the poor thing collapses and just drops dead. I don’t know, maybe he had a heart attack.

T: Noooo!

S: It was so traumatic. So they called Dale Brown up and they said well now what? So he talks them through about how to hoist this young bull up by the hind legs on the tractor forks, how to slice it open, and I remember it. I remember thinking that it looks like some pagan sacrifice.

T: Oh my god, yes.

S: Dale warns them, whatever you do, do NOT puncture the gall bladder. Don’t puncture the gall bladder. I think one of the guys had some experience deer hunting or something like that, and knew how to – thought he knew how to dress a deer. Anyway, of course – yep, they puncture the gall bladder. It was so horrible and disgusting.

T: And were you out there watching this?

S: I was. So the guys butcher the carcass. They’re using the hose to try to hose off these giant, huge chunks of meat. You know, you’ve got a shoulder, you got a haunch, you got ribs – whatever, trying to clean off this gall bladder fluid that’s over everything. Then, they turn it over to us sisters, this meat that’s been hose washed and on the ground. Now, we do not have a big enough sink in the kitchen to deal with these giant hunks of meat so we bring them into – our blue bathtub.

T: Noooooo. Noo.

[laughter]

S: Yes! And we are rinsing these giant hunks of dead cow meat, and there was cow blood everywhere. And it’s horrible, and it’s hilarious, and I wish I had pictures. I mean, it’s just amazing we don’t have pictures of it.

T: And yes, indicative of we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. That was always held out for us – sure, we can figure it out. What is there to it?

S: Oh man.

T: And that whole kind of mentality too, is hey, we have dominion over the animals and obviously people farm, but you try to do it in the most humane way possible, and this sounds horrible Sharon.

S: This was not that. No it wasn’t. Not quite Charles Manson with the blood everywhere, but…

T: No but not a far vibe, especially if you’re looking on and you see this disaster.

S: Like I said, it was pretty traumatic for a lot of people.

T: That is very traumatic!

S: Yep. So this other thing happens right; Dale had told them that they needed to give a shot of penicillin to prevent infection, and I did have some experience giving vaccines, giving injections to horses.

T: To horses, yeah.

S: I think they had me come do it, I think. It was after the castration and while the little black guy was still in the chute. So the one who survived the castration gets a penicillin shot in the butt. So maybe the next day or two or whatever, I don’t even remember how long, but this poor little guy is not doing well. So they decide…

T: Oh my god.

S: Yeah, I know. So they decide that they need to go ahead and slaughter him as well. I don’t know how they did it. I hope to God they did it with a single bullet to the brain, I don’t know. I was not there for that. He gets hoisted up on the tractor forks just like the other one, same repeat, but they did learn, they did not hit the gall bladder this time – yay, except that someone suddenly remembers – oh my gosh, this cow got a penicillin shot, and some people in the ministry are allergic to penicillin. So the idea is to bury the haunch that got the shot, and keep the rest of the meat, right?

T: What?

S: {laughing]

T: Oh my god Sharon. This is a terrible story. Oh, so in Green Acres, the funny gag was that she would make coffee that was thick and brown – this is a disaster. Oh. This is like the horror version. I am sorry, listeners. They clearly didn’t understand the way a penicillin shot would work through the system, did they.

S: Right, so you’re going to throw away that leg where the needle went, but you don’t think that it went through the rest of the body? Not big on science, because, you know, Jesus and the bible, right? And I don’t know, maybe if it’s cooked – I don’t even know. Anyway, they get rid of the one haunch and we do a repeat of the bloody blue bathtub ritual – you know, the same thing with rinsing the meat and everything. But then, we’re getting ready to package it up so it can go in the freezer, and someone realizes that maybe they trashed the wrong haunch, and that becomes this big question of did they throw away the wrong one?

T: Sharon, this is beyond a comedy of errors. That is exactly why the meat in the freezer had such a weird thing about it. And of course, we didn’t have the back story, but it was like – penicillin meat, what does that mean, I don’t even know what that means.

S: So it gets wrapped up. We don’t want to waste the meat, so it gets wrapped up and labelled penicillin, so it goes in the freezer that way. From that point forward, whatever they’re cooking, it’s got two different pots. One is going to be penicillin meat and the other is non-penicillin. And the funniest thing was to have guests come and show up, and they’d be going through the food line and see these signs – penicillin meat, non-penicillin meat.

T: Yes, and I guess I can cut the prison kitchen leaders some slack, because the responsibility would lie on her to make sure it was separated and didn’t hurt anybody. Oh my god. I never understood the back story. That is crazy. That is a really crazy story.

S: It was silly. I wonder if anybody’s got a picture of any of those signs. Anybody out there listening, if you’ve got a picture of our food line signs, that would be great. Alright, so that was the beef cows. Then, what is a farm without chickens, right? Chickens. There was this place called the Canton Fair in Canton Texas, and it was huge. It was…

T: I also – Sharon, I also went witnessing at Canton flea market. I have a really sad journal entry of how ineffective I was.

[laughter]

S: Okay, wait, so you get one more point for going to witness there because I never did, and then you lose a point for being ineffective. So it’s a net zero to you.

T: Yes, it’s a net zero. That’s awesome.

S: It’s huge. It’s acres and acres and acres, and you can buy anything, you can buy everything. This thing was once a month; vendors would come from like, Missouri, and all over the place, they’d drive hundreds of miles to come set up and sell at this huge thing in Texas. I remember one time there was a booth, someone was selling tiger cubs. I shit you not. They had three tiger cubs to sell. So, again, it’s Texas you know. Anything goes. So we’re going there to buy these crates of chickens. We wound up buying black Australorps; beautiful with these kind of like iridescent greenish sheen to their feathers, and they’re really good egg layers. We bought like, a couple dozen of them, at least so that we would have eggs.

T: Did you guys build a coop?

S: Yeah, yeah, there was a coop – in fact there was actually a sign somewhere that said Pretty Good Chicken Coop.

T: Ohh.

S: I’ve got a photo of that sign. I’ll have to find it. So we’ve bought these – I don’t know how many dozens of chickens. At some point, they began to get sick. I don’t remember the details; a couple of them died or something; somebody talked to a farmer to try and figure something out; maybe it was bird flu, I don’t even know what it was. So the decision was made…

T: Sharon, this is the worst Green Acres episode ever.

[laughter]

T: You know, little Arnold the pig walking around making jokes – this is the horror version. This is horrible.

S: Yeah, it isn’t good. So the decision was made – I assume by Keith, that okay, we’re just going to need to kill and eat them all before they get sick and die. Now, whether or not they were healthy for us to eat?

T: Can you even do that?

S: I don’t know, but that’s what we did.

T: What the hell?

S: Did anybody find out if it was okay? I don’t know but hey. These decisions were made by Keith. Now here’s what was another really horrible, horrible, awful thing. It was required – Keith made this rule – each one of us had to kill a chicken. We had to kill a chicken. It was not optional. He said okay, anyone who eats meat; you have to kill the animal at some point. Okay, so he’s not wrong, in fact, that is one reason why I eat much less meat than I used to, and I kind of toy with veganism; but this was not optional. It wasn’t a choice. This was enforced on everyone. It was horrible.

T: Yes, that’s so horrible. For those listeners, I would later move to Lancaster County which is farmland county, and there are definitely responsible ways to know where your food comes from and to understand what’s involved in that, and this actually sounds like a shit show.

S: It was.

T: I think it’s awful that he was laying this rule down because he thinks it’s a good idea and we know nothing about animals or farms, so let’s everyone kill a chicken. It sounds awful.

S: You were up in Lancaster County, I’m gonna say that’s Amish land, and they are not known for humane methods either, Tracey.

T: Correct.

S: Religious people – it’s like…

T: It’s religious people.

S: Don’t even get me going on that.

T: But no that’s a good thing to punctuate, because I feel like that’s been so hard, with the environment and everything, there’s this default belief that humans have this dominion that gives them the right to really screw things over.

S: Yeah. Use and abuse all you want. Alright, so we’re out, we’re near that equipment building between that and the ranch house but closer to the pole barn. There’s this big tree stump. I don’t know if they had brought it in or if it was there, a couple of feet in diameter at least, it’s about two or three feet tall. They take two big, long nails and they pound them into the top of that tree stump. They’re about an inch apart. There’s about three inches sticking out above the stump, and big heads on the nails. A brother grabs a chicken; lays it so its neck is between the nails; holds its wings and feet; kind of pulls it so its head is on one side of the nails and its neck and body are on the other, and we each have to take the hatchet and cut off its head. It was so horrible and traumatic it was … it was … it was … – I don’t even have words, Tracey. It was so bad.

T: You don’t have words, but if you step back – because I know this is kind of the lore story, but if we did have video cameras this is so goddam culty I can’t even describe it, especially when you have this rule put in place. I just … I have no words.

S: Awful, awful for the people. I will never forget. I remember this one poor chicken. I don’t know if it was me or if it was another person, I don’t remember that, but someone going to take the chop and flinching away because it was so awful, so it was a glancing blow, and this poor chicken. It was not a clean cut, the brother has to rush in and grab the hatchet and finish the job, cutting off the head. I’m gonna say this: Melody conveniently did not have to do this.

T: Yeah.

S: She did not have to do this.

T: I mean, I can tell in parts of her book where she is recounting somebody else’s tale and this one sticks out as well. Again, for those listeners, for us who came after this, this kind of had one of those haha lore stories around it, but I think it really fails to emphasize even the commune shaming, guilt, you have to be a part of this activity, that it is so traumatizing for some, and not how a real working farm would work, right? This is an event that does not happen in the way real working farms work.

S: No.

T: And you have to understand where your food comes from. It’s almost like it was a shock factor initiation.

S: Uh huh. It was sick. It was awful. We did have some nicer things with animals, though. We did.

[laughter]

T: Yeah so all that was gone by the time I came, but huh.

S: At one point – and I don’t remember how or why or where, but I wanted and bought a donkey, a little female donkey that was pregnant. I was so clever, we named her Jenny. Everybody who knows donkeys will laugh at that. Then I was even more clever; she had this little baby colt and we named him Hodie, so he was Donkey Hodie.

T: Donkey Hodie!

S: Get it?

T: I remember Donkey Hodie.

S: Really cute, and people enjoyed him, and he was so friendly, so that was one nice little fun interaction.

T: Yes, and he lived a good life. I think everyone loved him.

S: He did. The donkeys and the horses had great lives – and that comes to the horses. We had the two that Keith bought – this was a couple of years after we first got there, and I got the other horses, but the two that he bought at the auction; it was sad. One was totally lame and the other one we found dead in the pasture a few months later, probably from colic. He’d probably had a history of colic, and that’s why he was being sold at auction. So yeah, those two were sad. But I had found this old Texan rancher guy who was breeding Tennessee walking horses and they were all these barefoot horses. Sadly he did not feed them well, and they were pretty skinny. I remember – his name was Mr Rumbo, and I made a deal with him with the horses. I said I’ll make a proposition to you. You’ve got these mares, and they’re having babies. Let me bring a few of them to our place and I will train them to be ridden, because they were all not even tamed. I’ll train them to be ridden, that will make them more valuable; we’ll help raise the babies and train the babies, and in return we get horses for our staff to be able to ride and enjoy. So that’s what we did. One time I went over there to his place and he had this two year old young stallion who had this horrific wound. Actually, two wounds. Big, giant wounds on his left hind leg, up on his gasket, like he’d been caught in a barb wire fence and stood there for a couple of days just stuck; giant gashes and really skinny. I offered to bring him to our ranch Last Days Ministries just to nurse him back to health. I just felt bad for him. Anyway, he turned out to be a sweet and wonderful horse, and became almost a soulmate horse to me. A beautiful thing that my then husband did was he surprized me by buying that horse for me. He did it secretly and did it for me for my birthday. That was really beautiful, and that was how – and we’ll put some pictures up – he became the daddy of a lot of other colts that were born on the farm. Some of the guys talk about being traumatized watching the stallion breed the mares. That was sanctioned sex education at Last Days Ministries.

[laughter]

T: I was gonna say, we had no sex education so that’s your only introduction.

S: That’s your sex ed, that’s your quirky porn, that’s all you get.

T: It was all we got. I didn’t watch then but I read the comment that someone made and I thought that was hilarious.

S: Yep. Let’s see – that’s all the animal stuff I remember for sure. There was one other thing happening on the ranch, and that was hay. Farmers would bale the hay, usually in big giant round bales. This was hay that wasn’t particularly high quality and it wasn’t very valuable, and this idea of baling hay – Keith was like a kid in an amusement park, totally, totally into it. The equipment – he was just enthralled with it. How old was he? He was like, 24 years old, 25?

T: Kids with big toys.

S: Toys. That’s right. We wind up buying – I say buy, maybe it was leased. There was this big fancy tractor with an air-conditioned cab. I was recently told by someone who knew him pretty well that his rationale, his justification was that he wanted to be able to listen to music while he was mowing the fields and baling the hay.

T: Whaat?

S: This tractor is something that I finally put two and two together, just in the last few weeks. It is another irrefutable piece of evidence about the excess and the indulgence that I was completely oblivious to. I don’t know why, but I was obviously – I don’t know, was I star struck? Was I too trusting? It never occurred to me to question. We have a picture of this tractor. I zoomed in on this old picture and looked at it, what’s the make and model. It’s a tractor made by White. I looked up the model and the years it was made, and what it would have cost new back around that timeframe. In today’s dollars, that tractor would have been $116,000. One hundred and sixteen thousand dollars for a piece of equipment to cut and bale hay, that you could have gotten any farmer to come with his stuff and do it for you, right?

T: Correct.

S: Maybe we leased it, maybe it was used, but oh my god. What a horrific waste. If any of us had really realized this at the time – because remember, we’re all going without pay. We’re working six days a week, 12 days a day, you could have one glass of orange juice, food is rationed, and Keith wants this fucking fancy, airconditioned tractor so that he doesn’t have to sweat? And he gets to listen to music for the few times he’s going to bale hay? I’m like, holy shit, Tracey! What was wrong with me to not have any concept at that time?

T: He was probably really good at justifying the things that worked for him – you know, music, he’s gotta be always listening to music, because that’s what he does.

S: Yeah. But even beyond the money that was spent on this, how was this the best use of his time? The newsletter articles were always running late. Always running late, and we were the ones paying the price, having to burn and not sleep to make up for it to try and get it out on time.

T: Yeah, these just seemed like all ill-fated ideas.

S: Yeah.

T: They were one right after another.

S: Yep. There’s one other story I’ll tell and I think that’ll be the end of this. In some ways I think it’s one of the most troubling and traumatic and awful. In a way it might seem like nothing, because it was just a spider. There was this tarantula or wolf spider – either a small tarantula or a large wolf spider, I don’t know, but a hairy kind of thing, that was there in the ranch house. Somebody caught the spider and was going to put it outside or maybe they caught it outside and brought it in to show people. I don’t remember. But Keith gets this idea, oh I wonder what would happen if you put it in the microwave.

T: Ohhh. I hate this story.

S: Yeah. And several of us were like, oh my god, no, do not do that Keith. And he’s laughing about it and excited about it and yeah, just wants to see what happens. I don’t know if anybody was crying but we were begging him Keith please don’t do this, no, no, no Keith. And he laughed about it and he did it anyway. He put that poor spider in the microwave and turned it on, and waited when it popped.

T: Umph.

S: I’m just gonna say that is so disturbing and so troubling and so awful, and sadly I think it reveals something about Keith Green, the man himself, that this was something he could find amusement and pleasure in.

T: And the second act of the terrible part of that is that Melody also tells the story in her book, but doesn’t tell it in a way that reveals something disturbing about him. I know that the conditioning at the time is to really take away our own empathy for other living creatures that are not human beings and I think it is really problematic in disciplines of Christianity. To me this is a story that exemplifies that. I don’t care if you’re trying to get rid of a spider; you don’t torture a living creature, especially when there are people that are begging you not to.

S: Yep. I’ve talked to others that were there, and it stays with all of us. It stays with all of us in such a troubling way.

T: Mmm hmm. So Sharon, there is a good article in the New York Times from 1970 about now many communes were birthed and born in the 60s and 70s, and then the ones that endured into the 80s. This is unique, one to come into East Texas and try to do a ranch; I think the other one we talked a lot about while we were there was Jesus People USA, which was in Chicago. Which is the one I probably should have gone to.

S: Yeah, city girl! That’s where you should have been.

T: Some of these farm practices definitely ended, but in telling all these stories and about starting it, what is your wisdom about joining a commune?

S: Well I’ve got mixed feelings about it. There is definitely something really cool about community and connection, and pulling together. There are some cool things about it. In some ways we’ve talked about how Last Days Ministries spoiled us for other relationships, in that you became so close – but what is it, like soldiers in a fox hole, right? Trauma bonding, some of it.

T: Yes.

S: But also mission bonding. The idea of coming together to serve something that you feel is bigger than yourself; that you feel is for the good of others – there’s some cool stuff about that. I’m not opposed to communes in that sense. I think there’s a lot of benefit to community living. The big issue though is leadership structure, control, losing your own autonomy. That’s the problem. When you no longer are in control of your life and your choices, and what you do, and what you think, but you have to conform and submit – that’s the really unhealthy part. So it’s not the commune part that’s the problem. It’s the whole cultic dynamic of the leader and suppression of our individuality. That was the big problem. But I’m also thankful Tracey; I mean, you’re my best friend, and I met you there. I will forever be thankful for that.

T: Yeah, we did have an ability to really bond, and that’s one human need that transcends all cultures and people; we do have that need for community. I think for the 60s and 70s; I think we were a really ripe generation to want to be about something more than what we saw our parents living for. That was the hook for us, right, to have a common goal that we could all work towards together, yet when you start to look at some of the checklists of a charismatic leader, kind of rushing around his message, and some of the unhealthy practices that now we have a lot of information on as far as cultiness or cult-like dynamics. That is hard to achieve in a commune setting when there’s not an equal distribution of power.

S: Right. It’s the equality that was completely lacking. And it wasn’t just because of Keith; it was the whole leadership structure. That’s the problem; it’s inequality.

T: Yes. I don’t know – we haven’t studied in any depth communes and any commune that’s actually made it. I think by nature of coming together someone’s going to have to make rules and there’s going to be disproportionate meting out of certain rules and regulations, so I don’t know what the answer to that is. However, what we want to call out is when you start to hear all this nostalgia that is coming from the Jesus People, movies like Jesus Revolution, and different revivals that they’ll be talking about, wasn’t this cool and wasn’t that cool, and you start to see these communities that formed; most every time there was some unhealthy dynamic that either doesn’t get talked about, or people are not in a place to be able to make that public. So that’s why we’re here, Sharon.

S: That’s why we’re here.

T: Before you join a utopian commune, or start longing for the days of yore, we want to be able to share our experience with you, so you can avoid some of those pitfalls.

S: That’s right.

T: But the relationships are great, and I agree. I think that’s been one of the hard things, that people have looked back, and our modern day culture – we have not been good at really forging relationships, so these definitely give you an environment where that can happen, and it would be good if we could find healthier environments for that to happen in.

S: It would. Well, speaking of healthier environments, we did recently create a Facebook group called Feet of Clay, Confessions of the Cult Sisters Community, and that’s where, listeners, if you want to get in there and talk with other people who have maybe had some similar experiences as yours, or you’re questioning, or you’re struggling, or you’re celebrating – whatever it is, that’s for you. So send us a request to join, and we’ll be happy to let you in.

T: Yes, and you don’t have to give us your car, and you don’t have to sell everything that you have.

S: And you don’t have to kill a chicken.

T: And you don’t have to kill a chicken! So…

[laughter]

T: Well Sharon, I can’t believe it, we did it again.

S: What do you mean, you can’t believe it?

[laughter]

S: Alright everybody, thank you for hanging in with us on this topic that turned out to be longer – again! Oh my god Tracey, we have a great track record of always spending more time on things than we think we will, don’t we.

T: More time. We’re old, and our stories are long.

[laughter]

S: Thanks again for listening everybody. Like us, follow us, share with your friends about what we’re doing here. Hopefully they’ll want to listen as well. And Tracey, tell them about link tree and all that other stuff.

T: Yes, so go to Instagram @feetofclay.cultsisters, and our link tree there will take you to all the places where we are on social media. And Sharon….

S: [singing] Keith Green Acres is the place to be… Yes.

[laughter]

S: Okay, thanks for hanging with us everybody. We’ll see you next time.

T: Yes. See you next time.