Heavenly Voices

Heavenly Voices, a play birthed from the Mennonite Women of Color Oral History Project which tells the stories of 10 Mennonite women of color in their own words through the Ethnodrama theater filter, was a learning experience for me. While these women shared their stories from childhood through faith stories until late adulthood, I tried to understand their realities and add their stories into the collective story of all Mennonites in my mind. One of the main themes that struck me in each of their stories was the way their lives were filled with so much joy.
Coming into the play, I imagined I would hear of the hardship they each faced being women of color and even just being women in the Mennonite church, likely coming from other churches. There were times of hardship for all of them, but they didn't focus on this aspect over the course of the play. The focus was on the good times. Many of them said the faced very little racism in their lives but went on to talk about instances of racism later in their stories. The told of the Mennonite Church as well as other denominations of Christian churches helping them find peace and get their feet under them, not trying to bog them down or change them.
Maybe part of it is because they were already in Heaven, looking back on lives well lived, but each of the women told her story starting with beautiful parts of life, things she was thankful for, later told of the hardships, and ultimately came back to positive endings. They were joyful stories. They didn't tell of being outsiders in the Mennonite church (though many may well have felt like it at some point), but remembered quilting at the church with others and embracing their traditional songs and dances.
Those stories showed me that Mennonites overcome many different obstacles, not always including an immigration from Germany to Russia to The U.S. and struggling to overcome patriarchy in a small Kansas community, but maybe including drugs and poverty and racism and opposition to education or to their ethnic background. However, those stories also demonstrated how joyful and strong the lives of women  could certainly be in spite of those obstacles from engaging in loving community and giving one's life to the Lord.

Todd Davis and Nature's Simplicity

Todd Davis brought a new theme to my idea of Mennonite Literature. Nearly all of the Mennonite writers I have studied so far have written about nature in some way: Di Brandt’s “This land that I love, this wide, wide prairie” and her “The Zone: <le Détroit>” series,  Sylvia Bubalo’s “WHEN YOU MENTION APOCALYPSE,” Brandt’s comment that she cannot “write the land,”  etc. However, they all use the context of nature’s beauty and reverence. Sylvia uses nature to give God credit for creating such beauty. Di Brandt uses nature’s beauty juxtaposed with pollution and environmental issue to encourage environmental awareness.

Davis’s relationship with nature is much different than each of those. He sees nature in its raw forms and loves its simplicity. He depicts images of car crashes caused by a foggy cliff in “Veil,” an osprey killing its prey quickly and without hesitation in “Doctrine,” his father turning into compost and joining earth in “Turning the Compost at 50,” and burning the earth for its own good and competing against coyotes for the life of their sheep in “Taxonomy.” Davis seems to see nature in its simplest form, and he loves that simplicity. He embraces natures ability to take brutal action without overthinking the situation. Perhaps this is something he didn’t have in his own life growing up. Or perhaps this idea happily contrasts to the new Mennonite theme of approaching nature and God from extremely academic standpoints. 

Love, Mennonite Style

In reading "nonresistance, or love Mennonite style" by Di Brandt, I was made aware of the massive problem nonresistance can pose for young Mennonite Women. I know many more conservative Mennonite communities are highly patriarchal, and all Mennonite communities out a stress on peace and nonresistance. I had thought of the latter as a noble virtue for anyone to embrace, at least physical nonresistance, but this poem showed me that patriarchy combined with nonresistance can create a terrible ideal that women, especially young women must not talk back or fight against a man, even against something as terrible as sexual assault.

Brandt writes about when "your uncle / kisses you too long on the lips...& you want to run away but / you can't because he's a man like your father." Sexual assault kills me. It is the most vile thing i can think of at any given moment. It has become all too common on college campuses like Goshen, and a part of the problem lies here, with Brandt's childhood experience. She doesn't stand up for herself. She won't fight back. Even if she is worried for her body. Because she is more worried about being reprimanded for speaking up.
Brandt later continues in the same poem, "the / only way you'll be saved is by submitting quietly to your grandfather's house." She felt at that moment that the only way to save herself was to be quiet, to submit, to do whatever the men told her to. That is a dangerous way to be raised, no matter what tradition someone is from.

This issue has been expressed by other Mennonite female poets as well such as Julia Kasdorf and Sylvia Bubalo. In Kasdorf's poem, "Ghost," she talks about watching terrible things happen to herself in third person, unable to do anything about it. Her boyfriend touches her inappriately, and all she can do is watch. She watches and doesn't scream or fight back in a scene that implies her own rape (lines 15-18) ensues. She "rage[s] against the vulnerable socket" implying self-mutilation from the trauma of the rape. In lines 20-28, she pushes herself to be strong. She finds her solace in refusing to be the weak, obedient female she is expected to be.

Both Kasdorf and Brandt grew up in a seemingly typical environment in the Mennonite comminity, but these experiences force us to reevaluate what the Mennonite convictions are and what they tel children and adult alike about how they are to behave and interact with others.

A New Mennonite Replies to David Wright

As far as I can tell, most of our quilts are from our parents.

A parting gift as we journey to our own little Mennonite world,

But I’ve never even heard of Borscht.

We have pasta salad and cheesy potato casserole.

Meat Balls and Fruit-filled Jell-O.

Someone made peanut salad last Sunday.

Every week we have a hymn sing somewhere on campus.

It’s optional of course, so I stay in my dorm room,

Studying with a gay blonde guy.

His name is My Best Friend.

And here, others will fight for him more than he’ll fight for himself.
He tells me the speed of light is the same in all reference frames.
I write blog posts, trying to avoid "resonating" with something for the 4th time.

In convocation, we hope for academics,

Because Lord knows we can’t play the name game.

Neither can my Southern Baptist Friend.

We meet up on Wednesdays to talk Liberal politics,

After all, it’s only type of politics,

here.

I mean did Mitt Romney ever have a chance anyway?

Oh, Republicans.

So many thrifty Mennonites,

Driving used minivans and Oldsmobile’s,

Destination Goodwill or Aldi—never Walmart.

(Did he say Walmart? He supports child slave labor!)

We park ourselves in rowed-up chairs next to Real Mennonites,

With chin-strap beards and an iPad Mini.

Our theme this year is Passionately Following Jesus,

Unlike last year when we followed Obama instead.

“Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

Your…..come….your…be done,

As Earth as it is in Heaven.

…ah, our daily bread!

And…oh yes, our trespasses, As we…”

I mumble sounds where I don’t know the words,

Lest someone realize I don’t know Our Lord’s Prayer!

Though hymns have never been my favorite,

The four-part harmony never ceases to amaze (though I need the book on 606).

And we make our way through some piano-led tunes,

Or a traditional hymn with two accordions and a hammer dulcimer.

Our pastors change every week,

But they all graduated from here.

My favorite always prays for the college athletic teams.

“May they race for you in their hearts, Lord.”

After church we retire to the dorm to eat leftover ham salad—when there’s no potluck.

But today we eat at Los Primos—high class.

We speak to our waitress in Spanish, and notice a woman behind us,

Wearing a head covering and a plain blue dress.

We say nothing.

We are all Mennonites here. 

Sylvia Bubalo

Sylvia Bubalo, a Mennonite artist and poet, grew up feeling a deeply spiritual connection to God. She was able to listen to God and use the divine to guide her actions. So she became an artist: because she was called to do so.

Of her work is one painting in particular: "Evidence of Things Not Seen, Hebrews 11:1." It resonated with me because of how it both reinforces and debates the contents of Hebrews 11:1. The Bible verse in Hebrews refers to "faith" as the evidence of things not seen. It says that faith in now the assurance of our God, not things we can see. Bubalo's painting seems to reinforce this, by depicting a divine being beautiful and great to behold by the viewer of the painting, but completely shrouded from the view of the religious community below. It shows that the community must have faith without the sight of the divine. However, Bubalo's painting of the divine being also incorporates elements of the world we can see. The head is made to look like a radiant moon, surround by the bright night's stars. The body is comprised ot stripes of a rainbow. Those elements are all wonderful and beautiful elements of the visible world, implying that we can still the see proof of the divine in the world around us if we attribute those beauties to God. It implicitly suggests that evidence can be seen if the religious community would look up.

Invisible Ethnicity

I feel I am without ethnicity. If ethnicity is defined by being part of a group in which its members all share qualities in terms of geographical location, religious and political beliefs, immigration history, racial stock, traditions, food preferences, language, etc., then I feel i have none. I am white. I am male. I am an Ohioan. Being from Ohio is hardly an ethnicity. The people I am associated with are usually of all different races, places, and faces. Different histories, theories, and political policies. Tradition and immigration have been laid by the wayside where I'm from.

Maybe I'm wrong--maybe there's is a group of people I relate to more than I realize. But I know I may be entering a new ethnicity quite soon either way. The Mennonites are an ethnic group. They have immigrated from Europe where they were once called Anabaptists, split with Menno Simons, and even branched to the Amish. They are a faith group but have a common culture. They have strong roots in Russia. I don't know everything about the Mennonites, but I am becoming one of them. I don't know if that would make me ethnic or not, since none of the above distinctions are true of me whether I consider myself Mennonite or not. But I guess I'll find out.

This is a journey through the Mennonite ethnic literature and how it relates to my own ethnic history (or lack thereof).