This Yule of 2045, I went to Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary of EarthReligion in Artemis, PA, home of the Standing Stones of Four Quarters Farm. Four Quarters is the largest self-sustaining Earth Religious NeoPagan community in the United States and gained prominence last year for organizing the largest public ritual ever held in the nation’s capitol, celebrating the signing of the Global Climate Treaties.

I was privileged to meet and interview Kailin StoneSinger, the last surviving member of the early Board of Directors of Four Quarters. These days she spends most of her time on the front porch of the Farmhouse, where she can keep an eye on the comings and goings of the residents and visitors.

EM: Good afternoon, Ms. StoneSinger. Has there been a lot of incoming traffic today?

KS: Wha? Who? Damn battery! Oh. Call me Kailin, it’s not so confusing. And welcome to Four Quarters. Have a seat… no, no, not in front of my rocker! Ol’ Doc Johnson installed this swivel mount here for Ms Mossberg, and it works just fine. Makes it easy for me to keep that pesky dog out of the garden. You want a cup of coffee?

EM: Coffee would be nice. Ms Mossberg?

KS: Doc’s old pump shotgun. See, here she is, in way better shape than ol’ Doc these days. Heh, heh. She’s still doin’ her job, and ol’ Doc’s just sitting on a shelf in the Ossiary.

EM: Oh, I see. Well, Ms Kailin, I was hoping you could give me an idea of what it was like here in the early days of Four Quarters.

KS: Early days? What does that mean to you? Orren Anders! Bring us some coffee, boy, and no sass from you. You didn’t used to be any taller than I am, and don’t you forget it! Since he turned forty you just can’t tell that boy a thing.

EM: Well, I mean when the first Stone was raised. When the Sanctuary was just getting started.

KS: That’s two different things, you know. The first Stone went up back in ’95. That was really something then. Hadn’t ever been done before, at least not on this side of the ocean or in this lifetime. That was a special time, all those people from so many different paths. We all stood there in the dark, singing to that Stone, and we all knew even then that it wasn’t a one-shot deal. Thank you, boy. You make coffee just like your old man.

EM: Do you remember what you were singing?

KS: You bet I do. The words were "the future of the Earth is in our hands," and we took it seriously. Not just in a GreenPeace ecological sense, but almost like we were taking responsibility for the spiritual growth of the whole world.

EM: (coughing) Wow, that’s some serious coffee! Were things different the next year?

KS: Things are different every year, but in those first years the changes seemed bigger, somehow. More noticeable. Here now, cut that coffee with water till you get used to it.

EM: Thanks. What kind of changes happened then?

KS: Seems like we were always taking note of some new significant thing happening ‘Course, almost everything that happened was significant then, from raising that first Stone to getting dishpans so the dishes didn’t have to be washed in the bathtub. I remember when we signed the independent charter, in Circle Cast… looking around at my friends and family, all teary-eyed, and knowing we were doing something historical. Oh, and when the stage went up in the High Meadow, and then we bought the Members’ Village, and built the Members’ Hall with all its kitchen gear so we could feed everyone. What a change, from cooking for a whole festival in the Farmhouse kitchen with one oven and four burners. Not something I’d want to do again, you can bet!

EM: You washed dishes in the bathtub?

KS: You do fasten on the strangest things, don’t you? Yes. We washed dishes in the tub, it was all we had. There was this horrible wicker laundry basket that we used to hold the dirty dishes and to carry the clean ones back into the kitchen. I burned it.

EM: You burned it?

KS: You’re a regular parrot. Yep, I took that basket down to my camp and burned it. Very satisfying. It had turned green and was gettin’ kinda furry.

EM: Um, I see. Were you on the Board of Directors at the very beginning?

KS: Not at all. I was here at the first Stones Rising in `95, and for the first couple of years I saw myself as just another attendee. I’d look at the people on the front porch as I was driving out and think "I want to be one of those inside people who can just go sit on the porch and wave hello and goodbye." Of course Ol’ Orren never saw anyone as just an attendee and I think it was during the summer of 1997 that Orren first talked to me about the Board. He had a way of gettin’ you involved before you knew what he was up to. Boy was I surprised. And it was in early 1998 that I actually became a Member of the Board.

EM: You resigned from the Board at one point. Why was that?

KS: We had just come through a long stretch of major difficulties. I felt like the Board needed people with different skills than mine. By the time talk started about forming the Sanctuary, I had realized that there is always a need for someone who’s willing to know about the things that aren’t pretty, who will take care of the nasty little details so others don’t have to be troubled. I was kind of an undercover agent.

EM: Wasn’t there some kind of legal problem in the beginning?

KS: There was. It was all about a divorce. It was ugly for a while, but then it was done and we got on with what was important.

EM: What was important then?

KS: Seems like everything was important. It was all steps on the road to civilization, whether it was the wallboard in the office or a sink with running water in the Farmhouse kitchen, or being able to buy groceries on a regular basis. Every part of it was an accomplishment, the result of an ongoing struggle to survive and to succeed. You know that old saying about "doing so much with so little for so long that you’re now qualified to do anything with nothing?" That could have been our motto then. We were the champs of making do and doing without. Almost our only asset was our members, same as now. They were there with open hearts and hands, willing to work until they dropped. And we worked in close quarters, all squashed together like ants on a budget. There wasn’t room in the Farmhouse to turn around, let alone swing a cat. On Moon Service weekends there would be wall-to-wall people, sleeping anywhere there was floor space, with the dogs tucked in between. We didn’t take anything for granted then. Not quarter candles, not firewood, not the next meal. There wasn’t anything extra or left over, and people started to realize they could make a big difference in this little world. Funny how that little bit of knowledge has led to such an outpouring from so many people! They showed up every weekend and worked so hard on clearing brush and pounding nails, and they brought food to feed the crews… the ones who pledged their support and sent their little bit of money every month to keep us in coffee and nails. Especially those, because that pledge income was what finally convinced the bank that we were a self-sustaining organization.

EM: Was there anything in particular that you felt was a major accomplishment?

KS: I fulfilled a little dream of my own during the Full Moon service in December 2000. It was the last Full Moon of the old millenium. We handed out choir books, and I got to ask the Circle to "open your hymnals to page 310." Just a little thing, but it was something the choir and I had been working toward for about three years, and I’ll always remember how it felt, like we had really achieved some kind of acknowledged "church" existence.

EM: What about some of the later achievements?

KS: There are so many now. We built the stage in ’96, and in 1999 we started the Members’ Hall. You should have been there the day the floor was poured. We made people join the pledge program to put their handprints in the wet cement at the threshold. When the roof went on a few years later, Orren danced up there on the ridge pole, all by himself. And then we had those contradances on the Moon weekends during the winters. He was a dancin’ fool. When we started doing the Greek plays at Beltaine he liked to mess with the lights for the stage, too. Drove the technicians nuts, always in there adjusting things. And of course now there’s Miss Marcia’s pound cake franchise, all up and down the coast these days. And the retail stores, and the distillery. Are you a scotch drinker?

EM: Uh, on occasion. I’ve heard great things about your whiskey. By the way, I’ve heard that you named each of the Standing Stones.

KS: I didn’t name anything. I know the Stones by the names they tell me.

EM: What about the song that tells all their names? Didn’t you write that to name all the Stones?

KS: That damn song tells the names I know them by, and now it’s so long I can hardly sing it. You want to know who the Stones are, go to the Stone Circle and find out. I can’t tell you anything about them.

EM: Uh. Okay. So the first ring of Stones was completed several years ago. There’s been another project since then. What can you tell me about that?

KS: You mean the Ossiary?

EM: Yes.

KS: It’s a bone house, bonehead. And a lot more work than the circle ever was. It’s where the leftover bits of the Stone People end up. They’re all up there waiting for me now, cause’ my turn’s comin’. I’m looking forward to settin’ with them again. I miss ‘ em all.

EM: How does the Ossiary work?

KS: First you gotta get dead. Then other stuff happens, like maggots. Then your bones go to the bone house. You want more detail, go take a look yourself, or look it up in the propaganda over there on the table with the registration forms. By the way, did you sign a liability waiver?

EM: Uh, no... Okay, okay, I’ll sign. What’s that little building over there?

KS: That’s the library. I’m pretty proud of that. The pens are in the coffee mug, by the way.

EM: A lending library?

KS: Yup. We built it, and filled it with all the original books. It’s kind of a baby sister to the big one the Assembly of the Wheel built in Delaware. Now we get donations of books from all over; just last month we got a box of books from Ireland. One of our members willed them to us. Apparently he found them in some castle basement or something, and they’re full of old Irish secret knowledge. It’s great stuff.

EM: I suppose you have copies of the National Geographic in there.

KS: Of course. We’d have to, wouldn’t we? Especially the Stones Rising cover issue. We’re really proud of that. Pam got the idea way back in the 90s that the Geographic would be interested in us. She was unbelievably tickled when we ended up on their cover. But then, we think the kind of culture that has developed here is pretty interesting.

EM: How did you go about developing that culture?

KS: You can’t make something like this happen. You can’t just build an intentional community. We could see that way back when. What happened here was that a small group of people devoted their lives to making a place where we could be who and what we were, without any pretense, and over the years, more people have joined in. The big fundraiser back in ’01 was a turning point for that. When folks could see that this really wasn’t a cult of personality, that it was an organization that really was designing itself to continue long after the founders were gone, they were easier in their minds about being part of it.

EM: What was it about that particular fundraiser?

KS: Well, the Sanctuary had purchased a little bit of property in its own name just the year before, and it was coming time to refinance the original real estate. It was in Orren’s name at that time, and he and the Board of Directors negotiated to get that land into the Sanctuary’s name. Only trouble was, no bank would touch us.

EM: Why was that? Were there money troubles?

KS: Aside from everyone’s normal situation that there’s never as much money as you want? Nah. We were just a young organization. We didn’t have enough credit history, that’s all. You know banks. They won’t loan you money unless you don’t really need it.

EM: So you had this fundraiser…

KS: Yup. We put a lot of work into it up front, before we even mentioned it to the membership. It was a big job to administer, and we had so many other things going on at the time. The store was in its preliminary stages then, and there was all the fuss about getting that in order.

EM: So the funds for the real estate came from the membership?

KS: Every penny. If you check the books, you’ll see that Orren was prepared to forgive a bunch of his original investment, but we paid him back. Took us a while, but we did it. Of course, by then we’d gotten our 501d status and the IRS considered us a religious community, so he just signed it all back to the Sanctuary anyway. Still, it cleared the books.

EM: So the Sanctuary acquired the property from Orren Whiddon?

KS: That’s right. The Sanctuary bought the Farm from Orren.

EM: And when exactly did Orren buy the Farm?

KS: Well now. Do you want to know when he bought the farm, or when he purchased the property? Cause’ that’s two different things, you know.

EM: Uh. Well, when did he purchase the property?

KS: Back in 1994, I do believe. He bought the farm somewhat more recently. Now he’s in the ossiary on his own little shelf, drivin’ all the other dead heads up there nuts, I bet.

EM: How many people live here now?

KS: Couldn’t tell you. I forgot to count sometime back. I got enough to do keeping track of all those Stones. Speaking of which, I have things to do.

EM: One last question... What can our readers do to support Four Quarters?

KS: There are a lot of answers to that. We’re always grateful for donations, but we feel better about it if you come here and see what you’re giving to. Come visit the Stones. Camp here for a week. Come to a Moon Service. If we help you grow, then help us grow. Our greatest asset is our people, just like it’s always been.