Simplicity of the Mennonites, or Just the Martens?

One day in high school someone stole 15 dollars from my locker. Of course, I hadn’t attempted to make it difficult for a would-be thief – like all the rest of my lazy classmates, I had jammed my locker on the first day of school to avoid the hassle of dialing the combination between every class, but despite this I still thought it fine to hang my purse cavalierly next to my backpack while my locker door swung wide at whim. It wasn’t that I was stupid – I hope – I was simply naive. A 14-year-old at a private, Mennonite high school, I was shocked that such a thing had happened, or could happen at such a place. Since I had begun attending Bethany Christian Schools in sixth grade, the school, and my purebred Mennonite background, had engrained in me a deep trust in the surrounding community, and I had never before had cause to doubt the total security in which I lived.

Even this breach of that total security didn’t change my assumption of the general goodness of my community. I still left my locker open, and neither I, nor the classmates of mine who’d also been stolen from, pursued any sort of justice in this situation. It was simply a fact: somebody stole, but no one had a desire for vengeance of any sort, and no attempt to uncover the identity of the thief was ever made.

This is not to say that there was nothing that came of the event. When someone stole that negligible denomination from my locker, I suddenly developed an anxiety complex about wealth. Several classmates not so sympathetically pointed out that it had happened not just to me, but to three other students in my grade whose fathers, like mine, were all doctors, and therefore among the wealthiest of Bethany’s students. This implanted in me a deep feeling of shame and insecurity about, and, worst of all, awareness of wealth disparities amongst myself and my peers. Ignorance is bliss, and I had long been blissfully unaware of there being people in my community and even in my country to whom the adjectives “poor” and “rich” could be applied.

I had never before been given cause to think about the socioeconomic status of my family being any different from that of any of my classmates’ families, but after this jolt into awareness all I could think about was whether people perceived me as different, and if so, whether they resented me for it. I downplayed greatly my dad’s occupation and I became hypersensitive to any conversation in which matters of money are mentioned, even things as trivial as the price of a candy bar at the snack shop at school. I still haven’t been able to dull this aversion to matters of money, and while I’d love to chalk it up to that classic affliction of Mennonites – frugality – I know that’s not it.

In my Mennonite Literature class at Goshen College, we are keeping blogs on which to opine about the readings, lectures and/or activities from class. For one of my recent posts, I hopped up on my soapbox and bashed lightly (and, I hope fairly politely) on a former GC student whose essay on Mennonite Identity we had read in class. In it, the author of the essay, Ted Houser, wrote about his pride in belonging to a wealthy Mennonite community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and how he and his friends were all given cars for their 16^th birthdays and how they partied at their parents’ vacation homes.

Here I was confronted with someone who took pride in the thing I’d been long trying to shake – the affect of wealth – and it irked me. How could someone who calls himself a Mennonite be so proud of a lifestyle that seemed, to me, so overtly privileged? Because, despite my father’s occupation, my parents strived to live simply. The simple living value was instilled in me from an early age, and my assumption of it being something derived from our Mennonite faith and ethnicity rather than the whim and ethics of my parents was flipped on its head when I read Houser’s essay. There are Mennonites that have second homes, and cars for each child and don’t buy their clothes from Goodwill? What a disappointing discovery.

Growing up, I filled my bedroom with knick-knacks, candy, hair products and other random odds and ends that I had found in the basement of my dad’s parents’ miniscule house. It was a magical basement to me, crammed full of so many things to discover -- all of the unneeded things my grandpa had rescued from dumpsters around town, unused, and collecting dust, but unable to be thrown away. This seemed normal to me when I was younger – my 10-year-old self never suspected that dumpster diving wasn’t what all grandfathers did, or that it might be odd to have a house so tiny but so packed to the brim with totally unnecessary items that probably hadn’t been touched in a decade or two except to have more things piled on top of them.

After I developed the awareness that puberty often brings, I began eavesdropping on my parents’ conversations on the way home from a visit to the grandparents – “John, there is just so much stuff in that basement. What’ll we do with all of it when they have to move out?” and my dad’s response,

“Yea, that’s gonna be a hassle. But you know how it was for him – this is a compulsion. He’s a packrat.”

And that’s why the word “packrat” came to be part of my lexicon. As I was slowly exposed to more and more of my parents’, and grandparents’ history, and the stories of their parents, I started to understand the reason my grandfather was such a hoarder of things, incapable of throwing anything out.

My grandfather’s parents were among those Mennonites who had taken advantage of the beneficence of Catherine the Great and become farmers in Russia. As the Mennonites started to prosper there, their presence began to be resented, and they were forced to emigrate from Russia, and in this emigration faced great hardship. My ancestors – my grandfather’s parents and their children in the second wave of migrants – ended up in Canada, quite poor, and suffering from the memory of recently being near starvation. Forced to abandon most belongings during their exodus, it was difficult to regain their footing, and they remained impoverished for a long while in Canada.

So it is this memory of starvation and of always having less than he needed that has made my grandpa unable to resist his compulsion to collect things, and always fix rather than replace. And my father, growing up in his influence, has retained some of this, and some more. Despite the years my dad spent getting an education to become a surgeon, he’s started to feel the call of the land – a tellingly cyclical return to the occupation of his ancestors. Nearly every waking hour not spent at the hospital is spent trudging around on his “farm,” taking care of the cattle that have usurped the position of his real children, watering his huge garden, guarding his chickens from coyotes and coons.

This dying profession has captured his interest, the allure of the wealthy life of a surgeon completely gone, replaced with the allure of the simple life. It is this simplicity that I’ve come to most closely identify with my Mennonite ethnicity. And perhaps I only find it to be such a Mennonite value because it is what I grew up with – like the way little kids whose fathers have beards believe that all fathers have beards, that anyone with a beard is a father and a clean-shaven man couldn’t possibly be a dad – I assumed for a long, long time, and even still cling to the idea, that all Mennonites are simple people at heart, have the “plain people” –ness deep in them somewhere, defining them somehow.

Peace Shall Destroy Many

As Ann warned, the first part of Rudy Wiebe's Peace Shall Destroy Many was fairly slow going. There was a lot of exposition and theologizing -- while on the plow, whilst transferring a heap of rocks from one location to another, and while pitching hay -- in the first part. This section I only learned to appreciate after having read the second half of the book, which, in contrast, was practically a Michael Crichton novel for how much action there suddenly was (comparatively).

I found myself reading the book much more hungrily during Elizabeth's ordeal and the following drama. Then, with the arrival of Razia Tantamount, I could tell that things were about to get juicy. Wiebe's setup of the final drama offered great, but obvious, foreshadowing. Pregnancy within the community + Sexy lady teacher from outside the community = probable sex scandal within the community.

I found it interesting what the characters of Deacon Block and Razia Tantamount illustrated about power within this Mennonite community -- who has it, how, and why?

Block is respected, though strict, and many of the families within the community are grateful to him for having helped them get on their feet when they first arrived from Russia, as Mrs. Wiens expresses on p 262 during a conversation with Thom about the virtues and faults of Block. People in the community turn to Block when they have problems and need advice, and even Thom finds himself seeking advice (of some sort -- maybe more seeking an opinion) from Block.

Razia is another illustration of power, though a completely different one. Her power is derived from being an attractive and (fairly) level-headed woman, confident and ambitious. It seems as though the Wapiti community is fairly taken in by powerful figures. Even Thom finds himself acknowledging the allure of Razia and the ease with which his mind can turn to thoughts of her figure.

Interesting, also, is how both Razia and The Deacon experience (and try to hide) moments of great weakness as well.

In the fight scene in the barn, we see three young men of the community, each with a differing level of piety, fighting with each other because Razia and Hank are having (or have just had) sex. Though perhaps not a power that many women would want to have, Razia, undeniably, possesses a great amount of power over men, though obviously there is vulnerability in this as well, as, it seems, with all power.

Storytelling as a vital aspect of the Mennonite community

Storytelling is a traditional aspect of the Mennonite faith. Apart from the religious text, The Bible, the defining aspects, qualities and values of the church are perpetuated through the transferal of the stories of the faith community. This is why, at most Mennonite churches, one can usually find a little church library tucked into some neglected corner, where there are scads of Mennonite or Christian children's books, written to educate children in a more receivable manner than lectures or history lessons. These books range in topic and target age-group, though generally stick to the classic subject matter – non-violence, service and the global community, or histories of some sort. Books like The Yellow Star, which is a story from Denmark during World War II, in which the Danish king devises a non-violent method of protecting the Jews from the Nazis, are staples of the childrens’ section of Mennonite church libraries.

Children in the Mennonite church are raised on storytelling (children’s time during worship being a highlight of every Sunday Service for some kids) but it isn’t only children who enjoy hearing stories. Adults in the church also enjoy “story time,” and for reasons beyond those of the childrens’ enjoyment. Stories of the faith are highly important to people of Mennonite ethnicity. Stories are a way of passing on not only history but values. As the church evolves with every generation, becoming less and less separate, and gaining more secularity, the stories are a reminder of the way things used to be, and can serve as an inspiration to maintain the values of the past in the church of the present.

Jack Dueck tells a story about how a woman used her Mennonite values (love, compassion, service) to help some troubled young boys try to stay out of trouble. It is this type of story that demonstrates the relevance of the values of the Mennonite church and helps inspire those who have not had the privilege of being surrounded with stories like these since childhood to maintain the faith and the ethnicity, even as the definitions of these evolve.

Another way it seems that Mennonites use their stories is in attempting to reach the outside world, especially in trying to inform regarding Mennonites. An excellent example of this is Sydney King’s film, Pearl Diver. Though most Mennonites would recognize that King does a lot of blending of aspects of Mennonite history, the film remains a good means of introducing Mennonites to those who may be unaware of the faith group. Stories are told as illustrations of who one is, or who a people are, and Mennonites seem to have perfected telling to show.

And then there are Julia Kasdorf's poems in Sleeping Preacher. While some poems are less "story-telling" oriented, there are some, especially many of htose in the first half of the book, like, "I Carry Dead Vesta" and "Vesta's Father" that have a distinct storytelling element to them. In Kasdorf's poetry, the aim seems to be self-expression and documentation, but also there is a feeling of a desire for continuation of her ancestry and the stories of her ancestors.

These three artists are quite diverse, and they demonstrate how there is no limit to the number of stories to be told or who is able to tell them. All it takes is finding some part of one's identity in the community, and valuing that identity enought o desire to perpetuate it.

Considering these three artists and their work, it is easy to say that the future of storytelling in the Mennonite community is safe. Storytelling is and has long been a primary way of passing on stories that are vital to the identity of the community, and even the secularization of the future generations of Mennonites and increasing technology won't be able to curb the interest of the community in the stories of their origins and their convictions. How better to learn about the present than to examine the past?