Conversations About Community: final exam essay

The three Canadian Mennonite novels that we read in this section of the class raise a number of questions about how Mennonites ought to relate to each other and to people outside of the Mennonite community. Peace Destroys Many, by Rudy Wiebe, interrogates the concept of peace, exploring when Mennonites ought to rise from their traditionally peaceful silence to actively influence their communities and the world for the better. The novel A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews, asks how much a community should try to keep peace by unifying the multitude of beliefs that compose it and when doing so will only inevitably splinter it as dissenting members leave the community. Katya, by Sandra Birdsell, asks what methods, whether earthly or spiritual, people use to distinguish themselves from others and why they do this.

The Mennonites in Katya don't fit my traditional conception of Mennonites; they are continually using physical, earthly means to set themselves apart from their non-Mennonite Russian counterparts. In this community, wealth becomes a tangible, visual way to show their in-group status, and they admit quite openly that they think of themselves as superior. Even as a young girl, Katya has already learned her status in the social hierarchy; when Vera asks Katya to come down from Katya's place in the wagon to play with her, Katya surveys the dirtiness of the yard and symbolically declines to descend to Vera's level (58). Wealth is a way into a group, and because Mennonites are so often concerned about being part of a community, they strive to prove their group membership by separating themselves from their poor non-Mennonite neighbors on the basis of wealth.

Though this financial separation seems extremely elitist and counter to all Mennonite values, really it is only another strand of the spiritual/ideological boundaries that Mennonites so often draw between themselves and the rest of the world. As the character David Sudermann says, “'If you ask me, we're proud of our separateness. We've become architects of separateness . . . We're superior. Some even think we're chosen'” (82). Like any religious group, Mennonites hold certain convictions that they view as the right way to live, and just as so much of the world uses wealth to distinguish themselves, Mennonites also use these values as emblems of community membership. This separation often comes in quite handy; if they are both removed from and superior to the rest of the world, Mennonites don't have the constant sense of community obligation to help other people achieve their status. As David puts it, “We have come to think that being separate from the world means we can ignore the plight of the people who are not of our kind” (81). So while some modern Mennonites would frown on people who create hierarchies to distinguish themselves from others, Mennonite religious beliefs often serve the same dividing purpose as worldly wealth.

All three of these novels explore questions that deal with how Mennonites, who take such pride in close-knit community, ought to interact with the broader world. The ties within the Mennonite communities that these books describe can be so valuable in creating connection between people and establishing a sense of belonging. But all of the questions that these novels ask also reveal some weakness in community—whether that is because community sometimes attempts to propagate a single uniform belief or because community can stifle a greater connection to all humans.

Goshen Martyrs

A sentence from Stephanie Krehbiel's essay “Staying Alive: How Martyrdom Made Me a Warrior” caught my eye. Krehbiel writes, “In the end, it seems the martyr and warrior archetypes both harbor the same dangerous potential: to make us locate evil solely in the Other and imagine ourselves pure, be we sword-bearers or victims” (Tongue Screws and Testimonies 143).

At Goshen College we talk a lot about the Other in cultural/ racial/ socioeconomic terms, attempting to unite ourselves with people who are very physically and tangibly different from ourselves. But while divisions between these groups definitely do exist, I do not think that racial or socioeconomic othering is our main problem here at Goshen. I know that I am much more likely to think positively of a person of a different race or culture from me than I am to think positively of a person whose ideologies differ from mine. I think Krehbiel's analysis of “martyrs” and their othering is dead on.

To be willing to die for your beliefs, your convictions have to be pretty strong and dogmatic. And to have such strong beliefs, you can't really allow for any flexibility in considering other perspectives or points of view. Because the martyr's beliefs are so strong, he or she must consider anyone who has even a slightly different perspective wrong. Thus, anyone whose values don't match the zeal of the martyr's convictions become the Other. Martyrs are so focused on belief that this, rather than race or culture or socioeconomic class, is the main point of tension in their lives.

While we don't really have too many Mennonites running around dying for their beliefs anymore, I think that the dogmatism of martyrdom survives in the Mennonite culture. At least at Goshen, these days the issues so important to Mennonites seem to be somewhat different. Goshen martyrs get their sense of minority “persecution” from their beliefs that in some way differ from mainstream culture. So, for instance, more liberal Goshen Mennonites sense that they are a minority in their beliefs in environmentalism, feminism, pacifism, and a number of other isms—and so they think of themselves as “martyrs” for these causes. These issues are so important to them that they would do anything to advance their causes. And these definitely are really important causes. But unfortunately, I think this more modern martyrdom is just as apt at “locat[ing] evil solely in the Other [people who may disagree with these beliefs] and imagin[ing] ourselves pure,” as the martyrdom that Krehbiel describes.

Last week in The Record, Patrick Maxwell, a senior at Goshen, wrote a perspective about this very issue. Maxwell writes, “The level of thinking that created our current environmental crisis was characterized by divisiveness, party-line voting, and warlike language; we in the environmental movement would do well to take Uncle Albert’s advice and expand our thinking across the aisle. [We need to take] a higher-minded, more inclusive approach if the planet is truly to be saved.”

Faith and works in A Complicated Kindness

I am fascinated by how Miriam Toews weaves seemingly trivial outward details into her novel A Complicated Kindness. Even from the very beginning she bestows significance on the mundane, characterizing Trudie through a series of details about her habits and preferences. “She liked a made bed,” Nomi narrates. “She had an uncanny ability to predict the weather. She’d snap towels viciously before folding them, often very close to our heads as we sat watching TV” (18). By describing her character only in terms of these minor outward characteristics, Toews suggests that these small visible traits are emblematic of deeper inward features.

 In this small Mennonite community, those outward characteristics are only that—an expression of the far-more-important workings inside people. Nomi says, “The Mouth came to our house one evening to tell my sister that her physical self was irrelevant” (115). The body can be completely disregarded until it becomes valued for its own merits instead of for its expression of oneness with a person’s internal faith—in this case it needs to be reformed, according to the conservative Mennonite doctrine in Nomi’s town. In other words, the outward things that people do must be expressive of their inner faith; thus, Trudie is expected to volunteer and prepare church potlucks. Outer characteristics or actions can never be valued unless they are connected to the correct, church-ordained inner purposes. This in some ways seems like the good-works approach to salvation that Mennonites often take. If these characters express their faith by volunteering for the church enough and retaining outward appearances of physical purity, then they will receive God’s—and the community’s—favor.

Miriam Toews

But in other places in the novel Nomi describes a more faith-based approach to salvation. She and Tash try to get their parents to say the word “party,” and Tash gets really angry when they won’t say it. “Things shouldn’t hinge on so very little,” says Nomi. “But I guess if you can die without understanding how it happened then you can also live without a complete understanding of how. And in a way that’s kind of relaxing” (114). Nomi speculates that maybe all that her parents would have had to do to make them a happy family forever would be to say the word “party” that day. Similarly, all a Christian has to do to attain everlasting happiness is express a commitment to God. Given all of the underlying problems within Nomi’s family and the community, however, the idea that one word could repair all that seems a little far-fetched; perhaps the reader is to believe that salvation by faith alone is equally unbelievable.

I’m really not sure what Toews is trying to say about the whole works versus faith debate—or maybe she’s not trying to say anything about it. Maybe she is just implying that this ideal of salvation is, in general, a little unattainable.

Class issues in Katya

I think it's interesting that the main character in the book Katya (Katya) straddles classes. She is not quite on par with the Sudermanns, but she isn't of the same class as the Karpenkos either, so in some ways she can understand both of their worlds. There are all of these parallels in the book that come out of that structure. When Katya chucks the Sudermanns' cup down the well, she understands why Vera would want to sabotage her. But when she decides not to play with Vera because her shoes will get dirty, she feels the same superiority that Lydia Sudermann might feel towards her. This sense of empathy seems to fit with a lot of Mennonite values. The irony is that neither of the families on either end of the hierarchy can fully empathize with anyone else (though David Sudermann tries).

Class also seems to collide with freedom and capture in this book. When Katya confesses to Helena that she stole the cup, Helena tells her a story about how Helena freed a bird out of a similar spirit of envy when she was a girl. It's as though wealth and privilege are somehow freeing while poverty is captivity; by letting the bird go, maybe Helena aimed to also achieve the freedom of her wealthy friend. After Katya confesses that she stole the cup out of envy of the Sudermanns and their wealth, Helena reinforces her lower status by making her do even more work.

Though poverty is captivity in some sense, perhaps it also achieves the ends of martyrdom and eventual freedom in heaven. At one point in the book Katya speculates about the Bible passage that claims that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Mennonites have typically emphasized simple living, seeing the humility of owning few possessions as a physical sacrifice for spiritual beliefs—much as other martyrs sacrificed their physical lives for their religious values. David Sudermann says, “I've come to think a person's willingness to die for a belief is in itself a vanity” (82). As a wealthier Mennonite, Sudermann has the luxury to criticize martyrdom; he is rich and doesn't see the value in physical deprivation that Mennonite views would traditionally champion.

Gender roles in Peace Shall Destroy Many

I sort of struggled with the patriarchy in Peace Shall Destroy Many. In lots of instances I think Rudy Wiebe criticizes the extreme male domination in this Mennonite community, but in some places it doesn't come across as criticism.

The first woman we meet in the book, for instance, is Thom's mother, who appears in the kitchen. Whether this is intentional or unintentional, it reinforces the idea that while the men are out doing substantial work in the fields, the women are inside in the kitchen. His mother is a strong female character, however; when Thom is being impudent and criticizing his father, she is the one to reprimand him (73). Rather than defending herself, though, she is still using her strength to defend a man—Thom's father. Even from a young age people in this community learn the social assumption that women are dumber than men. When Hal and his friends are playing, he says in deprecation, “I guess any girl would build on the north side of trees so she could have all the wind and snow blowin' right on toppa her” (109).

Thom seems somewhat unaware of the plight that women in his community face. When he goes for a drive with Annamarie, he says, seeming to realize for the first time, “'I suppose girls—women—' his confusion bogged him, 'you—don't get much chance to see things if you want'” (41). After Margaret tells him the story of Elizabeth and Herman's thwarted love, he is also unaware of female disadvantage. Margaret says, “Poor Elizabeth,” but Thom “had not thought of her part in the story before” (135).

There are several prominent female characters in the book who seem to be much wiser than their stations as women in the community would allow for. Annamarie and Thom have several conversations in which Annamarie actually challenges Thom's more traditional beliefs about pacifism and distancing themselves from the outside world. Elizabeth is not a strong enough woman to stand up to her father—but neither is anyone in the community, and at least she secretly deviates from her father's patriarchal dictates by having a secret affair. Before she dies, she also goes against her father by telling Thom to get out of the community. Razia is another strong female character, though her strength in some ways comes from her sexuality; she seems to hold power over men, but that power is somewhat illusive because it is derived from her relationships to men.

I wonder how Rudy Wiebe, as a male Mennonite author, went in to writing this novel. He depicts a very patriarchal Mennonite community—which is likely an accurate portrayal—but I sometimes found myself wondering when he was describing it as male-dominated in order to critique that aspect of it and when he was just unconsciously, unintentionally reinforcing those social hierarchies because it is all he knows.

Falling into the Community

Every morning after announcements, the sixth-grade student president's voice would come on over the loudspeaker to recite the pledge of allegiance. Everyone except me and a few scattered church of the Brethren friends stood, placed their hands over their hearts, and recited the words that no one really understood. My Brethren friends and I stood but clutched our hands fiercely at our sides and clamped our mouths shut. We knew that we had a moral leg up on our peers. It didn't matter that we didn't understand why we didn't say the pledge—our parents had told us not to, and our parents were the sort of people who were right. I loved that I could feel so righteous just by not talking, and I always ran out to recess feeling proud of myself. 

My parents were Mennonites, but there were no Mennonite churches in our small Northern Indiana town. So they settled for the church of the Brethren, which they deemed the next-closest denomination to truth, and found a nice peacey sort of Brethren church to attend. Growing up, I understood the word “Brethren” to be mostly synonymous to the word “Mennonite.” Both of the words confused me, but I didn't really know any Mennonites aside from my parents and my Rich grandparents, so I really didn't understand what they were. Based on the inch-deep pool of Mennonites upon which I drew my ethnographic conclusions, I probably thought Mennonites were people with the last name “Rich” who didn't watch TV and sometimes had ancient toy chests filled with headless dolls lying around the house. And maybe I was partly right. But for the most part, I didn't think about it at all.

When I got a little older, my parents tried to explain to me the theological differences between Mennonites and Brethren, which seemed to amount to a silly little quibble over sprinkling vs. dunking baptism. I was not impressed. What really fired me up was showing off my pacifism. One year the Christian Peacemaker Teams held their conference, called “Congress,” at our good friends', the Kindy's house. They handed out these ugly-brown T-shirts that said “PEACE TAKES GUTS!” and had pictures of people like Menno Simons, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gandhi on them. I got one that was probably three times too big for me, but I loved that T-shirt. I wore it to school all the time in hopes that I might provoke an argument with one of the many conservative kids in my school. These kids all wore the red and blue T-shirts with an eagle and a militaristic quote from some long-dead president on them. I disdained the brainwashed ignorance of their T-shirts. 

Sometimes my subtle provocations worked. A girl named Erica Grossnickle in my U.S. History class in eleventh grade hated me because in class discussions about war I always piped up to argue that even if my family was in danger I wouldn't defend them by killing another human being. Erica Grossnickle was the first person I knew who hated me so openly and with such venom. She would sit at the back of the class, mocking me and muttering “fuck you” while I talked. In some ways I saw this as my persecution—as required martyrhood for the radical beliefs I was so proud of. Wearing my ugly “PEACE TAKES GUTS!” t-shirt with Menno Simons staring up at me, I argued my case in even tones and never turned my head at Erica Grossnickle's aggressive comments from the back row. 

I was proud of being a minority in my convictions, but when I started shopping for colleges, I knew that I wanted to go somewhere where other people thought like I did. I didn't set out to go to a Mennonite college; I looked at a lot of liberal schools. But my parents started leaving little notes on my pillow suggesting that I should consider Goshen College, that I should try to reconnect with the Mennonite roots that were so unfamiliar to me—and as usual, they persuaded me. 

When I got to Goshen, it was like discovering a home I didn't know I had. I hadn't known that there were so many people in the world like me—even my church of the Brethren friends were not nearly as compatible with me as the Mennonites I met at Goshen. It was as though everyone at Goshen College had grown up in my same simple ranch house with my same compassionate-disciplining, Luddite parents. I felt strange connections to almost everyone I met—as though they were all long-lost siblings of mine. At dinner in the cafeteria we talked about the woes of not being allowed to watch TV as we were growing up, about our international journeys, about the ethics and compromises of our pacifist values. I fell right into place in the Community (capital C). 

my Grandma Rich

But I also quickly realized that to gain status in the Community, you had to milk your connections. Other students had gone to Mennonite high schools and churches for years and were way ahead of the game; my parents hadn't been involved in Mennonite circles for at least 25 years. I had a lot of catching up to do. So I started digging around, unearthing my claims to Mennonite ethnicity that had lain fallow for almost a generation. After a bit of Mennonite-game playing and talking to my grandma Rich (whose mental family tree encompasses at least five generations), people hiding under the guise of my professors began popping out as my third cousins once removed. I took to telling people I wanted to impress that my grandma was Elaine Sommers Rich, a Mennonite writer, and I staked much of my fame on my great-aunt Emma Richards, who, I announced proudly, was the first Mennonite woman pastor. I used all of these signs to prove my authenticity in the Community.

At Goshen, I finally came to understand that one of the most fundamental differences between Mennonites and Brethren was not theological but cultural. Mennonites had their own Russian and Swiss foods and their own wholesomely ethnic style of dress. I went to the local bakery in Goshen for breakfast on Saturday mornings and realized that I could spot a middle-aged Mennonite woman by her Birkenstocks, L.L. Bean fleece, and tasteful dangly earrings. Goshen Mennonites had a universal love of biking and whole wheat flour and a universal aversion to plastic bags and soda. Mennonites also seemed so much more taken with this idea of Community than any Brethren I had ever met. This emphasis on the group and the uniformity throughout the group made Mennonites seem like much more of a distinctive ethnic group than the Brethrens with whom I grew up. 

Looking back now, I see how the wires connecting that world-wide Community of Mennonites has supported the weight of my life. Even when I didn't know that I was part of that Community, I always have belonged. My family travelled a lot as I was growing up and lived in different countries, but no matter where we went there were always Mennonites. When we lived in Korea for a year on my dad's sabbatical, my parents looked up the Mennonite Central Committee workers stationed in South Korea and paid a visit to a family called the Froeses. I remember thinking it was kind of weird that we would go out of our way to meet these complete strangers, but we instantly clicked with them. When we lived in Scotland for my dad's second sabbatical, we invited a Mennonite woman who lived in St. Andrews to our house. When I was considering volunteering at a camp in Northern Ireland one summer in college, my mom found a Mennonite woman who had worked at the same camp and put me in touch with her. As Mennonites, we had a network of instant friends all over the world, and no matter where we went, finding other Mennonites was like finding home.

I have finally come to realize that being Mennonite means more than self-righteously abstaining from the pledge or arguing against war. Now that I recognize that I live in this world-wide Community, I feel less need to establish my Mennonite identity in opposition to non-Mennonites. I feel less inclined to prove my Mennonite identity by showing what I am not and more inclined to show my Mennonite self by exploring what I am—which is part of a Community. I've found that this positive demonstration of identity is far more inviting to “outsiders” (for lack of a better word) than the negative “I'm not like you” identity that I assumed with Erica Grossnickle. A negative “I'm not this” identity can only alienate others, while a positive “I am this” identity strives to find the connections between all people. A little like God, this Community is all around me and pops up when I least expect it.

Last week, for example, I was on an airplane to San Francisco for spring break. At the end of the flight, the middle-aged woman seated in front of me, who was wearing tasteful dangly earrings and an L.L. Bean fleece, turned to my friends and me and asked, “Are you Mennonite?” I have no idea how she knew, but as I sat there on the runway of the San Francisco airport, I looked at the Mennonite woman seated in front of me and I thought about the cloud of Mennonites I have known in my life, and I said, “Yes.”

Negotiating Mennonite Interests in Memoir

Mennonites have traditionally avoided focusing on the self or on the broader world—the two audiences that memoir caters to most—but memoir can actually help Mennonites to heal and to express pride in their distinct ethnic community. 

Writing about one's own life can seem boastful and self-centered to humility-conscious Mennonites. By writing at all, an author implies that he or she has something of more than average importance to say to the world, and writing memoir suggests that the author's life itself is of more than average importance. Julia Kasdorf talks about struggling with this Mennonite taboo against distinguishing the self in her essay “Bringing Home the Work.” She writes about the Mennonite author, “To do this [write] she must assume a certain authority, a belief that her perceptions are true and worth telling. Yet to brood over one's existence and to speak in this way is antithetical to the long tradition of Demut (humility) and Gelassenheit (submission) so embedded in many Mennonite souls” (44). 

 

And yet sometimes writing about the self can provide a cathartic outlet for change and healing—sometimes turning one's personal pain over to the broader world through writing can help the individual move past him- or herself. This is the goal that the character Hannah from the movie Pearl Diver has in mind when she sets out to write the traumatic memoir of her mother's murder (though her story is not published in the end). Perhaps this was also Rhoda Janzen's aim in writing her memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Throughout the book she processes, through writing, her anger and sadness at her failed relationship with her husband Nick. On the last page, she writes, “Without my husband I had somehow drifted back to this point of origin . . . I suddenly had the feeling you get when, after a long sea swim, you touch bottom and draw a breath of relief” (224). Janzen's return to a Mennonite community and her journey in writing this book have both freed her and helped her to move beyond herself—to find both the Mennonite community and the community that will read her memoir. 

 

In the past Mennonites have also attempted to separate themselves from the world, but by exposing Mennonite culture to a broader audience, memoir bridges that gap between the the Mennonite community and the rest of the world. But writing about Mennonite experience doesn't have to assimilate Mennonites into the mainstream; on the contrary, memoir can help them take pride in their own distinct Mennonite ethnicity. Many of Julia Kasdorf's autobiographical poems in the collection Sleeping Preacher hold a sense of nostalgia for the Mennonite community in which Kasdorf grew up. Her poem “Mennonites” especially exposes the distinctiveness of Mennonite culture to her audience, who are mainly non-Mennonites. “We must love our enemies. / We must forgive as our sins are forgiven” (34). After detailing all of these Mennonite beliefs and customs, Kasdorf goes on to write that Mennonites intend to maintain this unique identity in the world. “That is why we cannot leave the beliefs,” she writes, “or what else would we be?” (34). Far from making the Mennonite community more worldly, writing about Mennonite experience for a broader audience actually shows it to the world as a distinct culture with its own principles and beliefs by which it will continue to stand.