The arrests of Mike Smith and members of the Church of All Worlds turn a long-running confrontation with the authorities into an immediate test of the group’s shared life. Mike is detained while eight members are arrested on John Doe warrants; the charges combine alleged public and sexual misconduct, conspiracy, and violations connected to the community’s school. The group’s response is practical and collective: most of those detained are bailed out within hours, while the members gather in the Innermost Temple for a special Sharing-Water service. When the Temple is set on fire, that gathering must become an emergency Nest. Arrest is presented not as the end of the community but as the occasion on which its religious bonds and vulnerability become unmistakable.

Background and charges

The arrests arrive against a history of repeated encounters between Mike and law enforcement. Anne tells Jubal that Mike has been arrested in several settings, including the army, carnival work, and his preaching; in her account, he does not harm anyone, and the authorities have been unable to convict him. She expects this episode, too, to bring publicity before the charges are dropped. The history makes the new arrests both serious and familiar: Mike is in custody again, but the church’s members do not regard that fact alone as proof that the government can keep him.

The alleged offenses are wide-ranging: public lewdness, statutory rape, conspiracy to defraud, keeping a disorderly house, contributing to the delinquency of minors, and conspiring to evade state truancy laws. The truancy allegation concerns the church’s nestlings. Their license to operate a parochial school has been canceled, but the children have not returned to public school. Anne distinguishes these concrete legal conflicts from what she sees as charges that cannot be proved. She also invokes the difficulty of placing a spy-eye inside the Temple or the Nest, presenting the community’s private spaces as a barrier to outside surveillance.

Arrest and immediate response

The news that Mike has been arrested reaches Jubal indirectly, through a conversation with Anne. She initially says that he is glum because Mike has been arrested again, then explains that he has not been told about it and that Ben has not called. Jubal’s surprise shifts the exchange from reassurance to urgent questions: he wants to know what has happened and what the authorities are alleging. Anne counters his alarm with her expectation that the familiar pattern will recur—publicity, followed by dropped charges—while acknowledging that Mike remains in custody.

The larger sweep catches eight church members, described as all of the Ninth Circle the authorities could find under John Doe warrants. Mike arranges for the other eight to be bailed out within a couple of hours, but he is not released with them and remains in jail. This division is consequential: the group can recover most of its members quickly, yet the person at its center stays behind. Mike sends word that Jubal may come if he wishes, but that there is no need; Anne agrees that a visit would be a pleasure trip, not a necessary intervention.

Shared water and initiation

The arrest episode gains meaning through the church’s established practices of trust and welcome. When Jill explains the water-sharing ritual to Patricia Paiwonski, she describes it as a lasting bond: participants trust one another, become partners, and accept an obligation that cannot be broken without fatal consequence. Jill also makes clear that Patricia may refuse without losing their friendship and warns her not to participate if the rite conflicts with her faith. Patricia chooses to accept. Mike sends water to Jill, and the glass passes from her to him and then to Patricia, turning an offered drink into a freely chosen commitment.

Other accounts show how the church uses its circles and water ceremonies to bring newcomers into the community at a pace shaped by their readiness. Mike selects Sam and Ruth for water-bonding when they have only just entered the Third Circle; later, they become a priest and priestess. Ruth describes how she and Sam studied and learned the language before Mike and Jill offered them water. She recalls fear and uncertainty before entering the Innermost Temple, followed by the ceremony in which the community calls them into the pool. Their account clarifies why a special Sharing-Water service can matter amid arrests: it is not merely a public observance, but a means of receiving people into the Nest and reassuring them that the group will help them learn and adapt.

Temple fire and emergency aftermath

The fire follows the arrests. The Temple had been empty of public activity because the services were canceled, but members of the Nest were inside, gathered in the Innermost Temple for a special Sharing-Water service in Mike’s honor. The explosion and fire force them to adjourn to an emergency Nest. The arrests therefore do not simply remove people from the community; they also shape where and how those remaining members gather, as a planned ceremony becomes part of their response to an attack on their meeting place.

Anne tells Jubal that nobody was hurt, although the property damage amounted to a couple of million dollars and was mostly uninsured. She says the Temple was already full of experiences and that Mike had planned to abandon it soon. Her account describes the fire as deliberately set, while making clear that its consequences include substantial financial loss even without physical injury. The group has already moved from ordinary services to emergency organization; Mike remains in jail while the others face the loss of the Temple and the need to regroup.

Significance

The arrests place the church between public prosecution and private religious practice. The authorities’ allegations target conduct, finances, the household, and the education of the group’s children, while the church’s own descriptions emphasize trust, instruction, and chosen membership. The contrast is not resolved by a court outcome in this episode: Anne predicts the charges will be dropped, but the evidence here establishes only that Mike is still detained and that the other arrested members are bailed out.

The group’s response also gives the arrests a communal rather than solely individual consequence. Members meet to share water in Mike’s honor; the fire interrupts that service, but the gathering continues in an emergency Nest. The sequence joins detention, mutual aid, and displacement without suggesting that the danger has disappeared. Mike’s repeated arrests may be familiar to Anne, yet the damaged Temple and the continuing custody show that familiarity is not the same as safety.