Final Essay

        In much of the Canadian literature we’ve read this semester, themes of wealth and treasure have been explored, whether indirectly or directly. In scripture, Jesus mentions wealth as the place that one's heart resides, and warns against keeping wealth in earthly places. (http://bible.org/seriespage/wealth-and-kingdom-heaven-matthew-1916-30) Each novel shows how characters respond to what they believe wealth is and what they do with wealth or treasure. To Mennonites, wealth is not always a good thing. Tangible wealth (possessions or money) are beneficial in small amounts for necessities, but traditionally, wealth is something of the world, and should not have the same amount of value that the world places on it. However, when defined as something that gives life value, wealth takes on interesting meanings in Mennonite literature.

       In Rudy Wiebe's novel Peace Shall Destroy Many, tangible wealth is something that is quite rare. The community focuses on farming, and doesn't have much extra money for luxuries. Instead of wealth being something monetary, the term takes on a different meaning. Wealth and treasure in this Mennonite community are found through "peaceful" relationships and other aspects of community life. Retaining the Mennonite culture, languages, and traditions are all what are viewed as giving one's life value. An important value that would be perceived to give one wealth is if one had peace. Through his letters to Thom, Joseph describes the community's version of peace by stating "As long as everything goes smoothly and they themselves cannot be blamed, 'peace' is being maintained." (194) This shows how an absence of conflict, whether healthy or unhealthy, adds to the "wealth" in the Canadian Mennonite community in Peace Shall Destroy Many.

     To Nomi Nickel, the main character of Miriam Toew's novel A Complicated Kindness, wealth is something monetary and useful. However, this belief doesn't line up with the rest of the members in her community. In the novel, she does recognize what is important to the Mennonites in her community. Instead of wealth coming in the form of money for food or cigarettes, wealth comes from the ability to fit into the community and live the life that fits into the strict Mennonite traditions. Similar to the community in Peace Shall Destroy Many, keeping peaceful and silent are virtues that add to the wealth in one's life. Nomi rejects this idea, claiming that her "...town is so severe. And silent. It makes me crazy, the silence. I wonder if a person can die from it." (4) Through her rejection of this, we see how wealth takes on two meanings for Mennonites -- one of consistency and stillness, and one of more earthly  and tangible terms.

     In Sandra Birdsell's novel Katya, wealth takes on a very different meaning to the Russian Mennonite community than it did in the aforementioned novels. The Mennonites in this community are very wealthy, owning much land, art, and other items not necessary to life, but appreciated nonetheless. This gets the Abram Sudermann estate in trouble, however, when the Russian revolution comes knocking (or in this case, obliterating). As the soldiers ransack the apartment and destroy precious items such as the feather mattresses and grand piano, Katya, the main character, looks on and reflects on the destroyed wealth. The novel states that "Kayta thought of the Scripture warning against putting too much store in earthly treasures when she saw the feathers swirling in the air." (238) This scene of destruction in the novel shows the reader how important the earthly treasures were to Kayta's friends and family, and shows how they may not have realized this until these things were being destroyed. Instead of placing value on intangible things or holy things, they have given worth to physical beauty that is now being destroyed. 

     I found it interesting how, although the three communities we read about differed greatly, they all considered wealth to be things that didn't end up helping them. Whether it be faux peace, extreme silence, or feather mattresses, the Mennonite communities all fell short of the ideal placement of wealth mentioned in the Bible. Even so, it was very interesting to see how each of the main character's related to or rejected the social and biblical views of wealth.

     

Canadian Poets

Patrick Friesen

Di Brandt

In my high school English class, my teacher told our class that the best piece of advice he would ever give us was to write what we know. If this is the case, Mennonites know about cows and cousins and cakes. Or pies -- shoofly of course. While the topics of much, if not all, of the poetry we read dealt with land, family, food, and history, I found that the forms that the poems took did contain an element of uniqueness. Sarah Klassen's poem "Making the Rate" takes the form of a series of short journal entries that draw in the reader and break the normality of a stanzaic poem. Patrick Friesen's "Clearing Poems"take on break out of stanzas as well. The lack of capitalization and punctuation gives the poems an interesting rhythm and a distinctive feeling, leading the reader into a more subconscious thought flow. Di Brandt also has a similar format to Friesen's, omitting punctuation and capitalization. Her poems are a bit more terse, but just as compelling. Overall, I really enjoyed learning about the Canadian Mennonite poets. The subjects may not have varied as much as they might've in secular poetry, but I think they all do very well at portraying their culture or their lives, and the variety in form gives the poems a freshness that they might not've had had they stuck to much more traditional forms.

Sarah Klassen

A Complicated Kindness and the Power of the Metaphor

I dig metaphors.

     Not literally, of course. What I mean to say is that I use and think in metaphors about as often as clouds cover Goshen. So, when Nomi Nickel, the narrator and main character of Miriam Toews' novel A Complicated Kindness, brought up how she saw her sister's use of metaphors to be a negative thing, she really caught my attention.
     Nomi's sister Tash starts to explore more and more intellectually, questioning the views that she has been handed on topics like religion, government, and culture. This makes Nomi extremely uncomfortable. Nomi tells us that "Tash had learned the meaning of the work metaphor, and had started applying it to almost every aspect of her life, and ours. I heard my dad say to her: Tash, some things are real. Some things are nothing but what they are...And some things are more than they appear to be." Tash's metaphor usage is not only frightening her sister, but also her father.
Why is this? What is it about the metaphor that is frightening? I've always thought that the metaphor is a beneficial use of language, as it can help us make connections between important things in life, or help us describe something to another person in a way that helps that person to relate. I still believe that this is true, but thinking more about the metaphor makes me see another side, one that Nomi was referencing. Metaphors can be dangerous and uncomfortable, as they blur the lines between the real and the imagined, or the known and the unknown. To some extent, saying that something is like something else takes away a bit of the uniqueness of whatever it is you are talking about -- a scary prospect in a society that so values singularity and distinctiveness. Metaphors have the power to take away what we think we are sure of and replace it with something we are unfamiliar with or have not considered before. When the world is seen in metaphors, it loses its stability, and nothing is "only" what it is. Metaphors have great potential to make language, and consequently, the ideas portrayed in language, slippery and vague. In a world that's already uncertain, taking away more convictions can leave one feeling vulnerable and afraid. I think this is the case for Nomi. If her beliefs about her world are not real, or only metaphors, what more is she left with? She has been faced with so much abandonment that it's just too much to be forced to abandon her comfortable ideas about heaven and hell or other established beliefs, understandably so. I think this is why she reacts negatively against Tash's struggles to find the truth through metaphor usage. Nomi needs structure, safety, and consistency, and metaphors can offer none of that.
     I doubt the answer to the problem is to speak literally all the time, as that would also eliminate a great amount of creativity, art, and fun from spoken and written language. Rather, in life and in language, I think it takes a certain balance and blend of the real and the imagined to create a world that is both stable and mysterious.

 


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Non-Resistance in Katya

          Sandra Birdsell's novel Katya provides interesting fodder for the discussion on non-resistance, especially from a Mennonite perspective. Although non-resistance doesn't seem to be a very apparent theme throughout the novel, acts of non-resistance are preformed that shape the plot in deep ways. One of the most vivid acts of non-resistance is preformed by Katya's father as they are being attacked. Instead of physically fighting back or even immediately fleeing, Peter Vogt attempts to use conversation and reason to distract the killers.
         From a worldly perspective, this didn't work, as he and the majority of his family ended up being violently killed. From a Mennonite perspective, the question of whether his tactics worked or not may be up for a little bit more of a debate. He did die, but he attempted to make peace in the situation and show love to his enemies until the very end. Was this success? I'm not sure -- perhaps I've been trained to view success more as everyone surviving and living happily ever after. Nonetheless, Peter's actions add a lot of complexity to the novel.
       Katya also has trouble throughout the third part of the novel when she thinks about the church and the church's policies. The events in her life have understandably made her more bitter about her traditional religion, and she isn't quite sure if she believes all that the church teaches on non-resistance and loving ones enemies. She even hesitates when thinking about baptism, admitting that becoming a member of the church would also make her become a hypocrite.

       The novel brings up many issues that I think a lot of people in the Mennonite church struggle with. When faced with a violent death or the violent death of a loved one, how far are we supposed to take the teachings of non-violence? It certainly seems more romantic and strong to die for beliefs, but is it practical? I can't say I would know exactly what I would do, but the actions of Katya and Katya's father spark interesting thoughts on what non-resistance and other peaceful teachings of the Mennonite church mean in our individual lives.

The Blessing of Deviance

          Discovering my Mennonite identity was a relatively smooth process for about the first fourteen years of my life. I grew up as a “cradle Mennonite” with a family history of Anabaptism and pacifism practically going back to the times of Menno Simons himself. My family attended the only Mennonite church in Toledo, Ohio, until we moved to a small country town in Ohio called Archbold. Here, we picked one of about twelve Mennonite churches. My family went almost every Sunday, and I had my fair share of Bible lessons and long sermons, all proclaiming and promoting peace, community, Jesus’ teachings, and God’s goodness.

            As a family, we seemed to fit the typical Mennonite middle-class picture quite well, even though we did seem to be a bit less conservative than some of the other Mennonite families. My grandmothers, aunts, and mother have never hesitated to pick up a pair of slacks or jeans, and would probably have no idea how to perfectly pin on a prayer cap. I remember the freedom my parents and my church allowed me when I was a kid and felt like dancing or jumping around during the more upbeat songs, even if it was just because they knew it would wear me out enough to sit through the sermon. I took all of these aspects of religion and culture into my identity, albeit unknowingly. It took a while longer for me to see a little bit more behind the scenes of my family’s faith, but doing so helped me understand my own faith more fully.

            This process started my first year of high school. I was helping my mom prepare supper in our kitchen on a weekday evening. We worked together quietly and comfortably. Mom asked me to go downstairs to the storage room to find a can opener. I went, and spent some time digging about in the old, dusty, rarely visited room before coming across something that was very, very far from an obscure kitchen tool. It was a large, musty black case with a few bumper stickers and scratches. I had never seen anything like it. I opened it up and my eyes opened wide as I stared at the brilliant old-school electric guitar.

Dad's senior photo

            Up until this time, the only musical instruments that I knew existed in our household were a piano, an old acoustic guitar, an autoharp, and a few recorders. All of these instruments, if forced to be religious, would probably have no trouble being Mennonite. The electric guitar that I was looking at, on the other hand, would probably prefer paganism, pantheism, atheism, or perhaps all three. Forgetting my original purpose, I bolted up the stairs and quickly interrogated Mom about the existence and presence of the guitar. She turned a little red, smiled, and told me that I had discovered the remnants of my father’s high school rock band, The Magi. Dad returned from his work, and as we finished supper, I brought up the topic to the father who I had known to be very loving, yet also very down-to-earth, hardworking, and somewhat serious. As I asked about the story behind The Magi, he nodded and filled me in on his rock band and all of their gigs and mini-tours. He also told about his fringed leather vest and boots still in our closet that we wore while riding his motorcycle around town – the motorcycle that he still had to hide behind the bush, as his parents did not know of its existence.

            This seemed to be the incident that opened the floodgates of family stories. As I began to talk to Dad about family, I also began to learn and realize things about my family that I hadn’t known or noticed before. I learned that my Grandma, a preacher’s wife, was practically excommunicated from her family for being one of the first to decide she wouldn’t go to hell for taking off her prayer cap. I also learned how Grandpa supported her. This should not have surprised me, as Grandpa determinedly started up the visual arts program for a local Mennonite college, even though the arts were looked upon as being exceedingly excessive in the Mennonite church. On the other side of the family, I was told stories of how Grampy owned and took pride in his car, even though the depression and the Mennonite church weren’t quite conducive to doing so. I smiled as I heard about how my proper, high German speaking Grammy shocked her family by falling in love with and marrying a man who spoke low German. I learned about ancestors who refused to participate in the government and in wars at all costs, about women who refused to fit the status quo – instead sailing off to India at the age of nineteen to help cure leprosy.

            All of these conversations with my parents led me to believe that my family wasn’t just weird; no, we were downright deviant. The members of my family, both immediate and extended, have and continue to emphasize the importance of living in strong community, possessing a powerful faith, and showing the world the love of Jesus, mostly through our actions. However, as cliché as it sounds, they also recognize the importance of following your heart and your passions, whether they lead you to the car dealer or to India. In my family, there is plenty of room for deviance, accompanied by acceptance.

            To me, this realization is one of the biggest gifts that I have been given. This odd combination of freedom and community allows me to explore and add to my life experiences and my faith. I have been gracefully given permission to weave my family’s stories with my own, and take their experiences to learn from. Because of this, my Mennonite identity is not always fully my own or created just by myself, but I’m perfectly ok with that. In my opinion, identity is too large of a thing to try and come up with by oneself, and one can only gain so much from just nineteen years of life. Being allowed to make my own decisions and learn lessons from my family has benefitted me in many ways when it comes to self-discovery through culture and through faith. My family stuck with me when I wore my shoes on the wrong feet as a kid to protest the family move, when I began to think more critically about my faith, when I chose a major without a career in sight, and even when I decided to join a rock band.

            My Mennonite identity is so intertwined with all of the other parts of my identity that I had trouble writing that sentence, as I had to separate the two. This identity is composed of many things, some taken from my own life experience and some taken from my family and their stories. In my character I picture a million bowls of tomato borscht and beet borscht, zwieback and shoofly pie, Russia and Germany and India and America, piano and oboe and autoharp and a dash of electric guitar, motorcycles and bicycles, forests and fields, rebels and peacemakers, and God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and a million other aspects of life, all mixing and making room and growing and changing with me.

            It might've been easier for a Mennonite faith and identity to be handed to me like an old quilt made by one of my grandmothers, all comfortable and worn out. Perhaps it would’ve saved my ancestors and me time to just play by the rules and do what is expected, and to form an identity around that. But, doing so only leaves my family and myself to wonder where the fun and where the life are in that. I can’t say that I know exactly who I am or how my faith has shaped me yet; it may take a few more decades, and maybe a few more trips to the basement, or discoveries of new instruments. However, I know that while I go through the process of finding myself and understanding how my Mennonite upbringing has shaped my identity, I have room to explore and room be deviant – to question, to explore, and to not feel the need to do what’s expected. And to me, much like it has been and is to my mother and father and grandparents and relatives, that is the most useful gift I could be given.

Peace and Passivity

After reading Rudy Wiebe’s novel Peace Shall Destroy Many, I felt as if I had a much better understanding of the general response of the Mennonite church when the book was first published, as I found that it was a response I could sympathize with. We, as Mennonites, claim to be a peace church. How frightening it can be when beliefs we take for granted are shaken, turned on their heads, and flipped inside out; and by a member of the inside community, at that!

            It’s scary to have to disassociate peace and passivity when combining them is not only traditional, but also considerably easier and more convenient than being a radical, or even just doing things differently. One quote that really stuck out to me comes from the introduction to the novel, and states that “The peace based on neglect and evasion will destroy.” Reading this for the first time considerably freaked me out, as the idea of peace being destructive seemed so counterintuitive to everything I had been taught. However, seeing how Thom’s thought processing changed in the novel and my own further reflections prompted me to realize that this statement is very true when peace is equivalent to passivity and a hesitancy to think critically about actions, as it often is. A good example of this in the novel is when Thom is debating about the advantages and disadvantages of teaching Sunday school lessons to the native children in Canada. If he were to choose to maintain the church’s position on peace things would remain simple, but he would loose relationships and opportunities to minister.  To Thom’s congregation, taking the peaceful route would be synonymous with ignoring the native population. Joseph Dueck, however, provides Thom with many different ideas of peace. To Joseph, peace “is not a circumstance but a state of being”.  This dilemma challenges the reader to decide if the peaceful route is always the traditional or uninvolved route, as it often can be in the Mennonite church.            

Rudy Wiebe

The novel hasn’t yet taken my religious views and turned them fully around, but it certainly has made me consider what my role is as a peacemaker in the world, but not of it. It’s challenged me to consider who the outsiders are in my community, and what my role is in forming relationships with them. It also caused me to think about if I view peace as a state of being or as a circumstance, and what peace in both of those forms would look like for me and for my community. Overall, I think Weibe did a very good thing by writing the novel, even if it did rile up the Mennonite church. There is a gift in offering new ideas that can open eyes, however complex, and for that I am thankful.

Mennonite Literature Midterm Essay

Ted Studebaker

“Tell me a story!” How many times have we said this to tired parents, or heard it from wound up children? What is it about a story that can comfort, lull, provoke thought, teach, or even disturb? As a child, I remember my Mom reading me a book called Ted Studebaker: A Man Who Loved Peace. (http://co.mcc.org/us/co/profiles/studebaker.html) The book tells of a conscientious objector who served in Vietnam as an agriculturist during the war, and was eventually killed. The tale opened up a way for my parents to teach my sister and I about the Mennonite view of pacifism, thus having a large impact on both of our lives.

Although Ted’s story is a true one, fictional stories can hold just as much power. In his novel Searching for Intruders, Stephen Raleigh Byler presents stories of realistic fiction that deal with very difficult issues such as reconciling with one’s past and dealing with grief in the modern world, both important issues. The plot of the movie Pearl Diver also wrestles with many questions, one being the question of the place of story in Mennonite heritage. Hearing stories from storyteller and writer Jack Dueck created an almost holy space in the classroom as we learned about history and human emotion and a range of things inbetween. All of these are just a couple of examples demonstrating the power of story.  This leads me to believe that there is a large role for fiction in the American Mennonite literature of the future, and it is a job of not just to entertain, but also – and maybe more importantly – to provide a mechanism that passes on important information about one’s culture and how to live in it.

            Cleary, the element of story holds much power. With a tool that is so influential in a community, the question of “who” can become apparent quickly. Although adult men have presented all of the aforementioned stories, I have to believe that this is not always the case, as we’ve heard accomplished stories by many ages and genders. Many writers and poets in the Mennonite community such as Stephen Raleigh Byler and Julia Kasdorf live, by choice or by circumstance, on the fringes of the Mennonite community. This shows how outsiders are frequent contributors to the creation of story, but Jack Dueck’s visit convinced me that excellent work can home from inside the community just as well, if not as exotic. Therefore, I think that the people who get to tell the story are the ones who feel the story, or have seen the strength of the story firsthand. I’m not limiting storytelling to first and second generations; rather, I believe that the ones who understand the depth of experiences (such as struggling with healing your own brokenness, coming back to a restless community, or even enjoying a really, really good cup of borsch with your whole being) have the power to describe such things in a way that teaches and grasps the attention of those on the receiving end.

            Who is the receiving end? In modern literature, it seems to be both insiders and outsiders. While oral Mennonite tales have been historically reserved for insiders to pass on traditions and tales, more recent stories invite the outside for a peek in. These stories portray the Mennonite culture in a variety of ways, from a close-knit, conservative group to an open, peace-loving community, to an unnamed part of a troubled past. This can get the storyteller in trouble, as each person has a different experience with the world, and each person wants that experience to be represented. A comfortable member of the Mennonite community who reads a story of harsh pain may not be as receptive to the story or the storyteller, and may not want the community to be represented as such. It’s hard to let go of an idealistic belief that we have no lessons to offer on reconciling pain and struggle, even though those are often the most powerful lessons a story can offer.

            With the aim of offering life lessons in mind (as opposed to recitation of facts), I believe that the storyteller has freedom in representation of story in order to get the point across, and would believe that stories should attempt to remain culturally accurate to appeal to the community, but should lean toward becoming humanly compelling. In this way, the role of fiction in the American Mennonite canon now and in the future keeps its role of entertainment of education.