At Sugar Creek 2025, Good Conversations and Plenty of Fun Refresh Catholic Workers

To view a gallery of photos from Sugar Creek, visit Sugar Creek Gathering 2025 in Photos at CatholicWorker.org. Find a gallery of video clips, including video of the talent show, at Sugar Creek Gathering 2025 in Video.

As longtime Catholic Worker Brian Terrell tells it, the first time Catholic Workers gathered at the Sugar Creek Retreat Center outside of Prescott, Iowa, in 1978, it was a much smaller event than it is today.

“We all fit around (the dining room table) for the first few years—and for the first few years, there were no children. So think about how much the movement has grown,” he told the 75 (or so) people gathered at the annual Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering this past weekend (September 12 – 14). “And it breaks the paradigm of these charismatic movements: they flourish, and then their leaders die, and then they fizzle out. But the Catholic Worker, from the death of Dorothy Day, has only grown and deepened.”

Indeed, despite very warm weather, people from more than a dozen communities from across the Midwest and beyond came together for the 2025 gathering. There were about a dozen children present, too—“the next generation of peacemakers and Catholic Workers,” as one person said. People brought coolers and crates full of food (including lots of key lime and apple pie!); they brought tents and hammocks and musical instruments and singing voices; and they brought all the stories they had saved up from the previous year.

Like a good liturgy, the gathering follows a familiar pattern from year to year: people trickle in Thursday and Friday, and on Friday night, many of them stay up late sitting around the campfire or hanging out in the kitchen, catching up. Saturday morning, there’s a large gathering in the outdoor pavilion where everyone spends an hour or more introducing their communities and sharing news from the past year. Then there’s a call for roundtable discussion ideas, which get consolidated into three sessions spread over the rest of the day. Then there’s a group photo, followed by a great dinner, followed by a talent show full of skits and storytelling and music. The next morning, everyone gathers in the pavilion again for a Catholic worker liturgy, and after the sign of peace, people go back home to their communities throughout the Upper Midwest and beyond.

Woven throughout the rhythm of this “liturgy” are lots of informal one-on-one and small group conversations at meals, over cups of coffee, hanging out on the steps, or sitting around the fire. Some people even stay up all night talking. Around the edges, there are song circles and informal jam sessions and art and basketball games and sweaty soccer games. People go on walks to enjoy the Iowa countryside with its rolling fields of golden corn and soybeans. Some people pick apples from the trees behind the retreat center while others nap in a shady spot on the grass. The kids play hide and seek and build forts and eat watermelon and sneak another slice of pie when the adults are off talking. They play basketball, have swinging contests, and (somewhat ironically) play “war” (very gently).

About the only thing that has changed over the past few decades: no one sleeps in the cemetery anymore (house rules), although people still stroll through and pay their respects.

Over the years, people come and people go. This year, people took time to remember and share stories about two longtime Catholic workers who are no longer with us, David Stein and Michael Sprong. By and large, though, the rhythm and cadence of the “liturgy” holds.

So much of the heart of Sugar Creek happens in the roundtable discussions and sidebar conversations, so there isn’t really a way to capture it all. What I’m going to try to do here, though, is hit some of the highlights, especially the newsy bits from the Saturday morning introductions. I made a really bad audio recording to help me with my notes, but there are gaps because of the poor audio quality; my apologies in advance.

Saturday Morning Introductions

Justin Novotney (The Great Turning Catholic Worker, Madison) jump-started the Saturday morning session by leading everyone in a call-and-response song called “This Is the House” by MaMuse:

In this house, we lead with love
In this house, we lift each other up
In this house, we learn to fly
with the dove,
This is the house we’ve been dreaming of
Come on over, come on in
Come on over, let’s be friends
Come on over, there is enough
This is the house we’ve been dreaming of…

Eric Anglada (St. Isidore Catholic Worker Farm) welcomed everyone and shared a little about what the farm does before handing the mic over to the next community.

St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker led off the round of introductions by introducing twelve people, many of them students or former students from Notre Dame University.

“We’re extremely pleased that there’s 12 of us here right now,” said Casey Mullaney. She shared that the community is slowly taking over their neighborhood with five houses all within shouting distance of one another, including two main houses of hospitality. The community also runs a drop-in center (Our Lady of the Road) where they serve breakfast and provide hospitality to people on the street.

“We’ve gotten really excited about possums in the past year, so ask us about possums,” Casey said. (I never did, so I can’t enlighten you.)

Beth Preheim sent greetings from the Yankton, South Dakota, Catholic Workers, including Dagmar Hoxie, who recently made her own birthday cake and hosted her own party for her 98^th birthday.

Beth was married to Michael Sprong, who passed away last October. She said that although she had many stories to tell about him, the most important story she wanted to share was about how Michael would clean the men’s bathroom at every hour during past Sugar Creek gatherings. “I think this just encapsulates him,” she said. “And if you see me in the men’s bathroom, I will be honoring Michael Sprong.”

Beth brought the display from Michael’s memorial service to Sugar Creek, including an iconic photo of him wearing round sunglasses. The display included that photo, with the sunglasses hanging from a string nearby so that anyone who wanted to pay tribute to Michael could take a photo of themselves wearing the sunglasses to send to Beth.

She also shared that she has created a memorial website, where people can see photos of Michael, watch the memorial service, and read and share stories and tributes. (You can find that here: Remembering Michael Sprong: Life, Legacy, and Tributes.)

Beth urged Catholic Workers to view the memorial service, which the funeral home director said was the best he had seen in his career. She explained that it came about as she shared stories about Michael with her sister, who teaches Spanish in a large high school in Washington, D.C. Her sister, in turn, shared those stories with her students, and those stories “spread like wildfire” through the school. The kids made artwork, posters, and peace cranes with messages on them. Several students were inspired to make big changes to their lives after hearing his story, including one teen who left an abusive home. All of those big, complicated stories about Michael became a sort of reader’s theater that constituted Michael’s memorial service.

“I fully believe that the Catholic Worker is a small thing that sweeps out into the world in such a big way,” she said. “Could I have ever imagined that?”

Larry O’Toole stood up to represent Peter Maurin Farm in New York’s Hudson Valley, where he has spent the past four months doing what he calls pre-farming and caring for Monica Cornell in her last months. He brought greetings from Tom Cornell Jr., encouraging people to visit the farm, both for its beauty and to lend a hand with its upkeep.

Larry will be spending the winter with St. Francis Catholic Worker House in Chicago, site of the last national gathering in 2024 to celebrate its 50th anniversary. St. Francis House brought several community members and friends, including Tim Herlihy, who founded Uptown Bikes.

Next up was Paul from Champaign-Urbana, where he was part of the St. Jude Catholic Worker House for about 15 years. St. Jude Catholic Worker doesn’t exist anymore, but several Catholic Workers continue to do hospitality for visitors and other activities together, he said.

Dottie Fromal reported that she had just returned from the London Catholic Worker, where the community has just reopened its night shelter and where they house 26 refugees. She got to attend the European Catholic Worker Gathering, which is modeled after the Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering, and also spent a month with each of the two Catholic Worker communities in the Netherlands.

Brian Terrell of Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker Farm (Maloy, Iowa) shared the history of Sugar Creek (mentioned above). Besides working for the Nevada Desert Experience and participating in resistance activities across the globe, Brian and his wife, Betsy Keenan, raise dairy goats, chickens, tend a garden, and host visitors and an annual craft retreat. Betsy’s weaving and spinning have also been an important part of their life together. Maintaining the work has become more challenging as they have gotten older, he said. Brian and Betsy continue to be open to receiving new community members.

Brian’s next adventure will be traveling to Nevada the weekend before Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Monday October 13), when protesters will walk to the Nevada National Security Site, where the U.S. conducted nuclear weapons tests for years.

Next up in the introductions was Linda Wells, a retired nurse from Fort Worth, Texas, and a “free agent” who has been traveling to Catholic Worker communities in search of a community to join.

Justin Novotney introduced the Great Turning Catholic Worker, which brought seven people from Madison, Wisconsin, where they provide hospitality to families from Latin America. They also host monthly roundtable discussions, weekly community meals, do urban gardening, and raise kids. Justin noted that Joanna Macy, the author, scholar, and environmental activist who coined the term “The Great Turning,” died in July. The Madison Catholic Worker community’s next roundtable will honor her life and reflect on her legacy.

Lincoln Rice introduced the Casa Maria Catholic Worker community from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they do hospitality and accompany moms involved with Child Protective Services. Although the community will celebrate its 60th anniversary next year, they do not plan on hosting a national gathering. Lincoln brought a number of books, including one that he helped advise on, the sixth edition of War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military.

Theo Kayser introduced members of the St. Louis Catholic Worker, which has been running for about a year and a half. The community does some overnight hospitality and makes burritos to distribute to people living in tent encampments around the city twice a week, hosts book clubs, and helps organize emergency cold shelters during the coldest part of the winter. Lindsey (not in attendance) has been working with a coalition trying to get the city of St. Louis to stop giving weapons manufacturers tax subsidies, and Theo has been working with Apache Stronghold, which is trying to stop a strip mine that’s planned on land sacred to the Apache in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest.

The Des Moines Catholic Worker community was introduced by Eddie Bloomer, who has been with the community for 32 years (which received a round of applause from everyone). He runs the resource room, and said that the community serves about 90 people at each meal. “So we need a bigger house, and hopefully the fire station down at the end of the corner will be available for us. If the city lets us, we’ll have plenty of room and plenty to do.”

Frank Cordaro (also of the Des Moines Catholic Worker) described the community as being in the tradition of the Catholic protest movement: the draft card burners and Plowshares activists. One of the community’s members, Jessica Reznicek, has been serving an eight-year sentence for dismantling an oil pipeline. But Frank shared the good news that Jessica will be released to a halfway house on October 1.

“So we’re very excited that Jessica is going to be set free,” he said. “Well, really not free. She’s going to carry a lot of paper. We may have to behave differently for a while, but we make concessions. And that’s very exciting.”

On a more somber note, he pointed out that back in the 1970s and 1980s, peace activists had to work hard to get arrested. “Now we’re just doing the acts of mercy. Just greeting the stranger at the door and giving them hospitality is an illegal act if they don’t come from our country.”

Mauro Heck also attended as a friend of the Des Moines community, which he was part of in the early 1980s; a professional photographer, he has been documenting the gatherings at Sugar Creek for forty years (some of his work accompanies this article.

Mike Miles and Barb Cass announced that the Anathoth Community Farm would be hosting the next Catholic Worker Farm Gathering in February of next year (February 12 – 15); they are working with Paul and Sara Freid of Lake City Catholic Worker to organize it. (Mike and Barb also prepared a wonderful feast for everyone on Saturday night.)

Alice McGary spoke for the handful of representatives from Mustard Seed Community Farm (Ames, Iowa), which does food distribution and farmer mentoring; they also host an agronomic university in the spirit of Peter Maurin (“an agroecology kind of learning program”) as well as arts and crafts retreats. About ten years ago, the farm published a newspaper called The Catholic Worker Farmer, she shared: “I wish I was still doing it.” Anyone who wants to co-publish it with them should reach out to the farm.

The farm does hospitality for learners from May through October, when visitors are welcome. “If you want to come see us in the winter, I would not recommend it,” Alice said.

Mary Farrell introduced the Winona, Minnesota, contingent, which consisted of herself, her husband, Jerome, and your correspondent. The Winona Catholic Worker currently operates one house doing daytime hospitality and roundtables.

Chris Colvard introduced members of the Bloomington Christian Radical Catholic Worker Community, which closed earlier this summer following the decision of Ross and Andrea Martinie Eiler to take a year of discernment at the Maple Ridge Bruderhof community. For his part, Chris and his wife are discerning a land project that involves “a little bit of foraging and a little bit of growing.”

Casa Latina Catholic Worker in Louisville, Kentucky, was represented by Bob Eiden, who says that the community is providing hospitality for a couple of immigrant families and causing good trouble down at the Raytheon plant, where he and fourteen others were arrested for trespassing.

(The February 2024 action by the Louisville Ceasefire Coalition blocked access to Raytheon and BAE Systems in South Louisville to protest the companies’ involvement in the war in Gaza; In June of this year, five of the protesters were convicted of trespassing and ordered to pay a fine of $125.)

“The video clearly showed that we were six feet from their property,” Bob explained.

“Bob, you’re re-fighting the case. Let it go!” Frank Cordaro (who came to Louisville to offer his support) shouted, drawing laughter.

Bob brought greetings from Roy Bourgeois, as well as Catherine Morris and Claire Lewandowski of the L.A. Catholic Worker.

Little Platte Catholic Worker Farm, just outside of Platteville, Wisconsin, is finishing up its first year, but it’s already got a lot going on—including a lot of young children, “the next generation of peacemakers and Catholic Workers.”

“We do grow a lot of food,” said Grace Marshall, the farm’s newest member. “Another aspect of our farm is art from the land, and one of the ways that has been manifesting is through an interactive community theater celebration that is based on a mythical story about St. Bridget of Kildare. But it’s also meant to kind of bring people back into the four elements of healing, which are songs, dance, storytelling, and silence. People who come will get to interact with each other in those four ways.”

They are also building giant puppets to be part of the show, which will be put on at the beginning of January. Another event to check out is their first annual fundraising concert, featuring Mike Munson of the Winona Catholic Worker; the concert is scheduled for November 1.

Steve Jacobs introduced St. Francis House in Columbia, Missouri. They have two houses, one of which is for hospitality. They had been trying to sell one of their houses, but that has been put on hold for a while. Meanwhile, the community does a Gaza March once a week, and Steve has been pulling together a new album of songs he has written over the course of his 42 years as a Catholic Worker.

“A lot of (the songs) were interrupted by phone calls and people asking for help, so I got a really late start writing the songs,” Steve explained. “But I’ve got so many now that don’t want to be lost. I want to implant that in the minds of other Catholic Workers so that some will go on after I’m gone.”

That album should be out in the next few months. It will be available on CD and hopefully on CatholicWorker.org. (Roundtable will be doing a story on Steve’s songwriting sometime in the near future as well.)

Next up, John introduced some of his kids, who are part of the White Rose Catholic Worker Farm (La Plata) in northeastern Missouri. The farm is part of the larger Bear Creek Community Land Trust, which now supports about 30 people, families and individuals alike, who are working together to build an off-grid, craft-based village in the spirit of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.

Much of the work of the farm centers on learning to live sustainably off the grid, John said. The community has been developing farm systems through water management projects such as swales, pocket ponds, rain catchment, and cistern storage, alongside perennial tree plantings designed to improve the land. They also continue to experiment with water design and conservation methods. In addition, they operate a horse-powered laundry house that has been in use for several years.

Saturday morning introductions wrapped up with a tribute to David Stein, a lifelong Catholic Worker who died in January of sudden cardiac arrest. Besides his work for peace and justice, he was a writer, poet, and wood carver known for his sense of humor and deep sense of community.

Mark and Katie, alumni of the St. Francis Catholic Worker House in Chicago, shared an excerpt from one of David’s humorous poems.

“So, David was a pretty funny guy,” Katie said by way of introduction. “This made us laugh…. It’s called ‘Catholic Worker New Age Spirituality Cassettes’:

‘Choose from these tranquilizing titles. Silence: A 90-minute discussion of silence by the leading experts in the field, accompanied by gongs, chimes, flutes, and whiny soprano saxophones imitating male voices.

“‘The Fullness of Emptiness: To achieve true fullness, we must know our emptiness. Various paths to fullness are explored, with emphasis on the lunch special at the Chinese Lantern.’”

The St. Francis Catholic Worker community set up a display of photos of David Stein along with some of his wood carvings inside the Sugar Creek Retreat House.

Roundtables

With that, the gathering turned to suggesting roundtable discussions. The gathering eventually settled on 12, broken into three sessions:

Session 1: 11:00 – 12:30

• Racial Justice – A discussion roundtable on racial justice in the Catholic Worker context.
• War Tax Resistance – Exploring the fundamentals of refusing to pay war taxes.
• Guerilla Art – Sharing ideas and practices for creative, resistance-oriented art.
• Crochet + Printing! – A crochet circle led by Johanna (White Rose Catholic Worker), paired with fabric stamping/printing activities.

Session 2: 2:00 – 3:30

• Palestine – A discussion holding space for conversation about the situation in Gaza/the West Bank.
• CW Books – A Catholic Worker book discussion.
• Grieving / Walking People Home – Conversation inspired by the book May I Walk You Home, reflecting on grief and accompanying others at the end of life.
• Song Circle – Singing and learning Catholic Worker songs together to take back home.

Session 3: 3:30 – 5:00

• Duty of Delight/Resistance – Exploring Dorothy Day’s idea of the “duty of delight” alongside the “duty to resist,” with reflections on how joy and resistance sustain one another.
• Engaging Opponents – How to effectively engage philosophical opponents.
• Resistance Retreat Planning – A planning conversation for the annual spring Resistance Retreat.
• Being Queer in the CW – Open discussion on experiences of being queer within the Catholic Worker movement.

I attended three roundtables.

In the racial justice session, Eric Angleda kicked off the discussion by noting that this year marks the 10-year anniversary of the 2015 Faith and Resistance Retreat that kicked off a three-year conversation about racism within the Catholic Worker. That process led a group of Midwestern Catholic Workers to issue an open letter to the entire movement called Lament, Repent, Repair. That letter proved to be controversial within the Catholic Worker movement as a whole. Eric and others shared that history as a way of opening the roundtable conversation. Unfortunately, I had to duck out half an hour into the 90-minute conversation in order to help prepare lunch.

The next roundtable I attended was called Catholic Worker Books. Lincoln Rice of the Casa Maria Catholic Worker in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, kicked off the discussion with a list of book recommendations, and then everyone shared their favorite books about the Catholic Worker; we also talked about the various books recommended by Dorothy and Peter over the course of their lifetimes; both were avid readers—although, as one participant noted, Dorothy was much more into novels than Peter was.

The last roundtable I attended focused on how to engage with our opponents. David from the Madison Catholic Workers framed the discussion in terms of how we approach Thanksgiving dinner with relatives who might not share our philosophical or political views. Several participants mentioned that the discussion seemed particularly important in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

I mentioned above how, sometimes, the most memorable conversations happen outside of the roundtables. For me, that happened to be a brief conversation with Beth Preheim about how to hold our Catholic Worker communities loosely.

Beth told me that before she, Michael Sprong, and others started the Catholic Worker in Yankton, South Dakota, they drafted a plan for shutting down the community. I was immediately intrigued because I’ve never heard of any organization (Catholic Worker or otherwise) that planned its own demise before it even got going. My first thought was: What a great idea…and why don’t more communities do this? Most organizations work to keep going as long as possible, often to the detriment of everyone involved.

The idea, Beth explained, grew out of the recognition that Catholic Workers don’t necessarily have to have a house in order to be part of a larger community and movement. Moreover, the Yankton community wanted to avoid a situation where the community shut down because people were trying to maintain an “institution” long past the point where many community members had either burned out or been called to other things.

That practice also is grounded in humility, a recognition that the Holy Spirit is in charge of the work, not us, and that it’s okay for things to end or die; the Holy Spirit will show up somewhere else, and the work will go on, regardless of whether we’re the ones stewarding it.

The Talent Show (and a Funny Protest Story)

Most Catholic Worker gatherings feature some kind of a talent show at some point during the gathering. At Sugar Creek, though, the stakes are higher because the winning act goes home with “football Mary,” a statue of Mary that was hit by a football long, long ago by Catholic Workers playing football in the house, resulting in the statue being somewhat bent forward.

This year’s talent show featured many musical acts, some skits, a few poems, an essay about green beans, and some storytelling—including Steve Jacobs’ story about the time in 1984 when he and Michael and other Catholic Workers declared an island in the middle of a lake on an Air Force base a “nuclear free zone.”

The Great Turning Catholic Worker from Madison, Wisconsin took the prize home with their performance of “Weasel & Weasel’s Convenience Store” by the Okie Dokie Brothers, complete with props. The runner-up was an original skit called “We Are the Raiders of the Night,” performed by some of the kids attending the gathering.

One of the highlights of the talent show was Steve Jacobs’ account of a protest that he and Michael Sprong participated in with a bunch of other Catholic Workers in 1984. The gist of the story was that a bunch of Catholic Workers swam out to an island in the middle of a lake on the property of an Air Force base with the idea of occupying it and declaring it a nuclear-free zone. When the Air Force base police showed up to take them in, the Catholic Workers warned them that their overloaded pontoon boat couldn’t possibly carry all of the protesters and the officers, too—but the officer in charge ordered them to board anyway.

You can probably guess how that turned out: the boat nearly capsized (twice), the driver abandoned ship, and the motors kept dying. All the while, the video crew kept filming the fiasco. In the end, Steve and Michael ended up jumping off and pulling the pontoon boat to shore. The Air Force men were not happy campers, but Steve and Michael couldn’t stop laughing.

“I looked at Mike and he had tears running down his eyes,” he said. “We’d just howl, we couldn’t control ourselves, it was so funny.”

They were still laughing even as they had their hands spread out on the police van to let the police search them. “I turned and said to them, you know, if you guys had joined the Navy instead of the Air Force, this would never have happened.”

They were charged with trespassing, but the charges were dropped because the video that the police had been taking for evidence had, according to the Air Force, been “accidentally erased.”

Prayer and Goodbyes

The next morning, Sts. Mary and Joseph Catholic Church, which is located on the retreat property, held a Catholic Mass at 8 a.m. The deacon who gave the homily welcomed the Catholic Workers present and gave a homily that touched on the need for charity to be accompanied by justice.

Following the Mass, Catholic Workers gathered in the outdoor shelter once again for a liturgy led by some of the folks from Little Platte Catholic Worker. The liturgy opened with a three-page-long reading of a litany of delights; everyone in the circle was then invited to add their own delights to the list.

After a short reflection on the Gospel reading for the day, Frank Cordaro told the story of the Last Supper as he blessed the bread and wine, which was then passed around the circle to be shared by everyone. That was followed by the sign of peace and goodbyes as people took their leave to return to Catholic Worker communities across the Midwest.

To see many more photos from Sugar Creek, visit Sugar Creek Gathering 2025 in Photos at CatholicWorker.org. Find a gallery of video clips, including video of the talent show, at Sugar Creek Gathering 2025 in Video.