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.