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Small is powerful
A Bethel graduate and her husband figure out how to “make service our whole life.”
Although Beth Elaine Preheim values her Anabaptist heritage and considers herself a Mennonite, she has also found a home among Catholic Worker communities for more than two decades.
The daughter of Vern Preheim ’57 and Marion Keeney, Beth spent most of her growing-up years as an “MCC kid” – her parents worked with Mennonite Central Committee, mostly in Akron, Pa. When Beth was in 4th and 5th grade, the family lived in Kinshasa, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) as MCC volunteers. “I grew up with that grounding of peace theology and service,” Beth says, “and also seeing people put their college degrees into practice.”
Beth started at Bethel in 1980, where she was interested in education and teaching but was mostly “trying to find my way.” After two years as a student, she spent 1982-83 in voluntary service in Kansas City before going to Goshen (Ind.) College and finishing a degree in English.
Her experience as a community organizer in Kansas City introduced her both to the Catholic Worker movement and to the Community for Creative Nonviolence, a homeless advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. From 1985-89, she worked with a number of organizations, including the Community for Creative Nonviolence, in a variety of organizing projects in several different locations, with a common denominator being an association with various Catholic Worker groups wherever she went.
The Catholic Worker drew her, she says, with “a balance of practical organizing skills and study, and an emphasis on being service-oriented while also seeking to address systems” that cause and perpetuate injustice.
“The Catholic Worker has a tradition of the worker-scholar,” she says, “who continues to do lifelong learning. Another tradition is to do acts of mercy ourselves, not depend on institutions for that.”
While not a Catholic herself, Beth says, she has lived with Catholic Worker communities for 20-plus years. “I chose [the model of] a loosely knit network that is still grounded in tradition,” she says. “That fit with my Mennonite upbringing.”
Beth met her husband, Michael Sprong, at the Community for Creative Nonviolence in 1985. They were married in 1987. “My husband is skilled at strategizing and organizing campaigns,” Beth says. “The challenge was: How do you deal with the economics – have a job but still be able to take the time for organizing projects that require significant time commitment?
“We wanted service to be our whole life,” she continues, “not just to do service [for a while] and then go on with our lives. We decided to send me to nursing school – it was a career that fit our service ethic and that would be versatile and pay reasonably well.”
So in 1989, Beth came back to Bethel and entered the nursing program, graduating in 1991. She and Michael were also co-coordinators of the Newton Area Peace Center (which has evolved into the present-day Peace Connections) during that time.
From 1991 until recently, home base for Beth and Michael was a family farmhouse located east of Freeman, S.D. They put considerable time and energy into “a rural Catholic Worker project, working with an intact rural community, as opposed to the other end, with the homeless,” Beth says. “Some of our questions were: What would it look like where there was an equitable distribution of resources? What would a just lifestyle look like?
“We grew our own food and shared resources,” she continues. “We networked with other [rural Catholic Worker] groups in Iowa and Wisconsin to talk about the issues, learn skills and share ideas.”
During those years, at various times Beth worked at Freeman Academy, ran a small drop-in clinic and did public health. She currently is part-time director of a cardiac rehabilitation program through Freeman Regional Health Services. However, she and Michael now live in Yankton, S.D., where Beth has a second part-time job as a nurse educator, doing training with other health-care workers for a large health-care organization called Avera.
Their reason for moving to Yankton was to open Emmaus House, a hospitality center for women and children who come to visit men in prison. Yankton is home to three prisons, including a federal prison and a juvenile detention facility, and the state psychiatric hospital.
South Dakota has the largest incarceration rate per capita in the six-state region that also covers Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota. After Michael served a 60-day sentence at the federal prison in Yankton in 2000, following a civil disobedience action, he and Beth and others in the community who were active in peace and justice issues began to notice the often-forgotten needs the prisons created.
Many of those incarcerated are Native Americans whose families live on isolated reservations with little or no access to public transportation. “What I learned from [a long association with] MCC and from my parents’ work responding to needs is that you have to have a long-term service understanding,” Beth says. “You have to learn to see the need in the community.”
It was increasingly obvious that hospitality for prisoners’ families was one pressing need. “We spent a year talking to our local contacts and praying about what we should be doing,” Beth says. “We didn’t set out to start a Catholic Worker community [in Yankton] but that’s what happened.” In 2004, they bought a house in Yankton and Michael and others worked on rehabbing it. Until last year, Beth and Michael split their time between the Freeman farmhouse and Yankton while opening the hospitality ministry called Emmaus House.
To date, more than 1,800 individuals have stayed at the house. There is no charge for lodging or food and no income limitations. It’s not charity, “based on economic need,” Beth says. “It’s a model of justice that fosters mutual aid. People [find it helpful] to spend time with others who have a common experience. We’re helping to create a culture in which it’s easier for people to naturally come together and serve each other.”
Emmaus House visitors find out about it through information posted at the prisons and hospital, through chaplains and institutional staff and through word of mouth. Michael provides the primary hospitality, and the house runs on Beth’s salary and outside donations. Often those who stay in the house will leave a gift of money or a gas card to be used by someone with more limited funds, or will buy or cook food.
Because Emmaus House is small-scale, “it stays manageable,” Beth says. “In the Catholic Worker, we say just because it’s small doesn’t mean it can’t have a powerful effect. This is not intimidating – others can look at it and say, ‘I could do that.’”
She recalls one man who came with his family to visit Emmaus House after he was released from prison. “The family traveled out of their way to come here and thank us,” Beth says. “The man stood in the kitchen with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘I heard all about you. I knew they had a safe place to stay and be supported, to deal with their emotions.’ This is a way to be with families on their journey. It creates a center of support, and that’s service at its best, for me.”
Even though when she started college she wasn’t sure what direction to take for herself, Beth says, “I knew I wanted to engage the world in a creative way. The task of every good college is to use academics to help students move out into the world.
“I chose Mennonite colleges because I knew they were going to be the connection points, the network places – I wanted to get that liberal arts education, a grounding and education in a broad range of skills rather than working toward a specific profession [immediately].
“I found a community of ideas and experiences – for example, I learned history and economics in a group that looked at them in a global sense, not just American. That was a better choice for engaging me in the world and finding my place in it.”