Transcript of Life in a Christian Commune

I'm Ayesha Rosco, and you're listening to the Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. Today, we're going to slow it down. Sometimes, life can feel nonstop. If it's not one thing, it's another. But whenever I get a bit of quiet, I'll try and maybe do some coloring by numbers, or I'll pick up a book. Recently, I read a novel called Ruth, and it stuck with me because of the questions it posed about the way we live. The novel was written by Kate Reilly, who drew from her own experiences living for a time in a Christian commune. It was a place where individualism was sacrificed for the needs of the community and the greater good. Now, that is far from what I personally desire, but I was so intrigued because Kate, as a young woman, went against that societal push towards personal achievement, and instead went in the direct opposite direction and sought out this quiet life, one without a lot of thrills and distractions, and it offered her a sense of purpose, meaning, and peace, something she hadn't found anywhere else.

It was some of the happiest time of my life.

Kate grew up in New York City, and while in college, she found herself asking big questions about her role in the world.

I was preoccupied with being a good person, and I studied philosophy in college, and I did not find any answers.

I recently sat down with Kate Reilly to talk about her story and what led her to write the novel. Now, of course, the title character of the book, Ruth, is not Kate. The character Ruth was born in 1963 and grew up inside a commune. But the fictional woman seemed like a vessel that allowed Kate to explore her own feelings about a slower and more intentional life. You're listening to the Sunday Story. Stay with us.

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We're back with the Sunday Story. I'm talking with Kate Reilly. Welcome to the program.

Thank you so much.

Tell us about this community that Ruth is born into. What do they believe?

The community is in the peace church tradition, which would be the Amish, the Friends. It's a group that came from Europe. They were persecuted by the Catholics because they didn't believe in infant baptism. They thought that everybody who wanted to be a Christian should make that decision as an adult. That was a hot take in the middle of the day.

Back in the day, yes, it's a big deal.

Yes. They don't have any private property. They share everything in common. They don't have any official hierarchy. You come to decision through consensus and prayer rather than voting or somebody is officially the boss. It's summer camp your whole life. When you get to share all your appliances or get to, have to share all your appliances with your closest neighbors, you don't have quite as much to worry about, except you got a lot more like community negotiation to do to make sure people are getting what they want when they want it.

What is it like for Ruth in particular in this community when she's growing up? She is very curious. She is questioning. She has a lot of thoughts. She's trying to figure things out.

It is in a lot of ways based on my experience in a community like that. I'm a very inquisitive person, often to my detriment, but just wanting to know how things work, wanting to know what's going on outside and inside, and not knowing whether that curiosity is itself a bad thing. Should I just be content with the information I'm given? Because a lot of people seem really good with that. That seems to satisfy a lot of people. What's wrong with me that I want to know everything about everything? That was something that I felt constantly. I didn't grow up in a community like that. I had the information of having access to all sorts of internet, but I wanted to explore what it would be like if you didn't come from a place of total access but had that same drive to see the world and know what people were thinking and know what the rules were in other places or why the rules were the rules. All that stuff is so interesting to me.

I hate to do this to an author because it's not that Ruth is you, but do you feel like is Ruth your exploration of some of your own thoughts?

Yeah. I mean, it's real weird to know that basically a slice of my brain is now being sold as fiction. Yeah, a lot of her interior life is based on my own and my own worries about being bad or worries about why do I feel different or why is something that seems so easy for other people really tough for me? All those things were based on my experience, but I definitely was not the only person struggling with any of those questions there.

Ruth is inspired by an experience you had after dropping out of college. You joined a community like this. So what happened there? How did you end up joining the community and how long did Did you stay, and all of that?

It was the thing where I knew about this community. I met a few young people who lived there, and it was so intriguing to me.

Why was it intriguing to you? As a young person, you were in college, you were like, Look at those people over there. What made you go, That looks very interesting. I want to see what that's about.

I grew up in New York City and was exposed to everything in the whole world from basically day one. I think it was that... I was preoccupied with being a good person, and I studied philosophy in college, and I did not find any answers or any that seemed to track in real life. When I left college, it was because I am not finding the answers that I'm looking for. When I met the kids from this community to see people who seemed so sincerely kind thoughtful and hardworking in a way that I couldn't twist into, well, they were just naive or they were just diluted. They were smart and engaged. It was the first time I'd seen a group of young people, specifically, who seemed to be able to both talk and act on moral beliefs. But they just happened to exist in this weird, cloistered place that the only way to learn about it is to go there and it. I can't get this information remotely. I have to go and try it for myself. It was terrifying. I would go and visit for a weekend. I'd go and stay in one of their communities.

Just 48 hours of being there was at once so impressive and overwhelming just to see that a totally different way of life was available. You could live in a world where kids did not encounter cash or screens until they were 18 years old. If then, that was not a part of your life. Life was built around the needs of the oldest and youngest people. Just everything was done with so much thought, and I would be overwhelmed with how great it was. But also, I am used to so much time alone. I'm such an introvert. Just the change in being around people every single waking hour and being available, having intense conversations for most of that time or being genuinely present rather than dissociatively playing games on your phone. It was just a huge mental load. And so I knew that going there would be a lot more of that. I mean, a lot more of just struggling to stay present and not burn out on the attention and honesty that was demanded in every interaction. But I was like, if I don't at least try this, what a a hypocrite will I be to return to my life and complain about capitalism and complain about how nothing is designed with actual human needs in my...

I knew that I would feel just such a hypocrite if I didn't try it seriously, knowing that it existed, knowing that I could go there and try it.

So you tried it. How long were you there?

I was there all told about a year of living in that community, and it was some of the happiest time of my life. I met so many just fully realized people. I think a lot about how before I went, I was so nervous about having to give up things that seemed so essential to my sense of myself because I did feel like who I am is really just a list of the things that I've consumed and the choices I make about how I look. To go there and realize that I couldn't make a reference to The Office or some book that I thought was funny. None of that had any currency. Everybody wears the same thing. You don't use computers most of the time. The music that you hear is the songs that you are singing together. That all those things that had seemed so essential to my sense of self were just like, accessories, but that I was the person that I was, the person that anybody is, is way deeper than the shows and bands that they list on their whatever, Facebook profile. I feel like my teenage years, especially, were defined by this feeling of just being optimistically obsessed with things, with people or places or bands or looking a certain way.

It is a real fun way to drag yourself through time is to keep looking to this new person who might have all the answers or this new version of yourself that's going to be really cool and confident. But having just done that over and over, you're always still stuck in you. Just trying to learn that as briefly exciting as new things can be, that it's probably going to be more of the same. So maybe learn to be okay with where you are and who you're with and your immediate surroundings rather than hoping that the change is going to come from some external novelty.

That it will be in eternal. I mean, there is a truth. I mean, what? I know the eternal truth, but I do believe, I should say, is that like, yes, there is a cost to going after what you want. There's a cost to saying, well, I got this right here, and I'm going to stay right here and hold on to it. But a lot of people, if they just stay right there and hold on to that thing that's stable, they become resentful.

Yeah.

That's the cost, right? Because you're like, I could have went over there. Sometimes there's a gift to go, and I went over there and shot after that thing that was wild. It blew up in my face, but I did what I wanted to do. Because you can have peace with that, too. You could be like, I I did it. It was what I wanted. It didn't work out, but I did it. And so I appreciate that I did what I wanted to do.

Absolutely.

But it does seem like with Ruth in that community, it seems like she really struggles with her life, right? Because she is an individual in this communal place. She's still having trouble with her identity.

I think because in the world that she lives in, that community, nothing that you can do in that world is valuable beyond its ability to communicate love for the people around you. There's just no point in doing something that isn't going to, it's some way, take care of your family and your community. I think she would, somebody in that position would have very little in the way of role models of people who did something that was truly what would qualify as a passion project or a selfish, this is my symphony that I needed to hole up for a year to write, or this is my novel that I couldn't do a normal job for a year because I had to work on my novel. Those pursuits, there aren't really... Maybe that's the real downfall of a community like that is you can't do something truly selfish, even if it's going to yield long term Something like art.

Ruth doesn't seem all that happy. For much of her life, does that matter, the personal happiness of Ruth?

I mean, aside from the time when I lived in that community, I have basically been told from all sides, Do what makes you happy. That is the resounding message that I've grown up with, is your happiness is of prime importance, and whatever you need to do to find it is the thing to do. So I don't think that living in a community is an absolute answer to happiness at all. I think there's got to be some healthy middle ground. But I know that coming from the other version of the world where all that matters is your personal fulfillment and your sense of yourself and your self-realization as it appears on social media. That is also a way to to get lost in a hall of mirrors and be really unhappy in that way. I think something that I heard when I was living there, something that I heard from lifetime members, something that I saw, and something I absolutely believe is no particular lifestyle is ever going to spare you the basic difficulty of being a human being.

Of existing because it is hard to exist.

There's nowhere you're going to find where you don't... As long as you love things in the world, you are going to be hurt in the world. I don't think there's a place you could find where that's not the case. No marriage is easy. No relationship with your children is 100% good no matter where you are. There are definitely systems that I think make it more humane or more fair. But I think a lot of the things that that character and I struggle with are things that would be struggles as long as you are conscious. I mean, yeah, that's about having a brain rather than where that brain happens to be.

So you don't think it's about the community. That in and of itself is not the struggle. Your life can be your life. And this book is not arguing that being in the community, your life is somehow diminished because you don't have the absolute freedom.

Yeah. I absolutely believe that whatever problems people see in a community like the one I described, or when they imagine a place where everybody dresses the same and doesn't get to date the way that modern dating works or choose the job that they necessarily want. I think that if those things distress you in fiction, just look at the ways that those exist. I think that the idea that we've got it figured out in regular life and that our versions of freedom and romance family and work fulfillment. That they work. Yeah, that we're really killing it. We're knocking it out. I don't know.

Now that you say it, now that you bring it up, there may be something to this. Where you say that community was, I mean, no, but that's a very different way of looking at things. I got to ask you, on the book jacket under your author photo, it says, This is your last book. Why?

I got to set the bar real low, Ayesha. It is so nerve-wracking to me that anyone would expect more. So if I do, if I manage to achieve anything after this, it will be a nice surprise.

Okay, that's a way to look at it. Kate Reilly, author of Ruth, Her First, and maybe not Her Last. Book. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much, Ayesha.

This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Justine Yann and edited by Jennie Smith. It was engineered by Quaisie Week. The original interview was produced by Samantha Balaban and edited by Melissa gray. The Sunday Story team also includes Andrew Mambo and Liana Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Naguchi. I'm Ayesha Rosco, Up First will be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Up First sponsor-free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Up First Plus at plus. Npr. Org. That's plus. Npr. Org. Shortwave thinks of science as an invisible force, showing up in your everyday life, empowering the food you eat, the medicine you use, the tech in your pocket. Science is approachable because it's already part of your life. Come explore these connections on the Shortwave podcast from NPR. Hey, it's Rachel Martin. I'm the host of Wild Card from NPR. For a lot of my years as a radio host, silence made me nervous. That pause before an answer because you don't know what's going on on the other side of the mic.

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