Hope in Peace Shall Destroy Many

In class on Thursday, our guest speaker Ervin Beck asked the class if we thought there was hope given at the end of the book. Hope for reconciliation, of the sustained church, of a new mindset, or hope in a maintained mindset even. I said yes. There is a hope in the end, as Thom finds a middle ground in his internal war.

            Since the beginning of the book, Thom had struggled between ideas of total peacefulness and the fact they others were dying for their right to believe in peace. Between complete separation from the world, and living among the others and reaching out to non-Christians. These concepts waged war in his mind just as WWII waged on outside the community and the Mennonite community itself waged its own war against those very ideas, especially acceptance of the “half-breeds.” In the end, Thom punches Herb to protect his friend, Peter from his assault. He thinks about this, and he seems to come to terms with it as an action. This is what Thom decides is the right thing to do: act. In seeing Jackie Labret, Thom realizes that he must try to tell him the Good News in as pure a manner as possible, without interpretation one way or another, so that he might hear it as the disciples did from Jesus. He finds, as he did earlier, that “Truth must be followed as a Star, though the road is sometimes superhumanly difficult.” With this insight, he discovers the most hopeful message of the entire book: “Only a conquest by love unites the combatants.”

            His revelations at the end are somewhat vague in places and up to interpretation, but I feel that Thom rejects both the idea of fighting in the war and also staying in Wapiti and enjoying the luxury of peace that other buy for him. He decides on a middle way, a “conquest by love.” He will go out and act and teach and witness and wage his own war against the forces of darkness, not fought through violence, but through love and understanding and teaching. This is the hope in this very broken ending, and it is the hope for all the Christian world.

Gadfly

            Gadfly was very much a community event. The play brought together current students, former students who had gone to school with Sam Steiner, and even Sam Steiner and Sue themselves. The people in the audience baffled me by remembering the days when they were directly involved with Sam Steiner’s story. It blew me away.

            As in any story to be told, directors and writers must choose what parts of the story to be told, and I thought they chose well. They could have focused more on the aspect of homosexuality; they could have focused on Sam’s other male writing accomplices, James Wenger, Lowell Miller, and Tom Harley; they could have took the angle of an over-strict Goshen College president’s board and former president Paul Mininger’s regret later on. I feel all of these issues and aspects of the story are important, but not all are important to the story the Theatre of the Beat wanted to tell. They weren’t out to call attention to injustice and discrimination toward homosexuality or reprimand a former president for a harsh decision. They told the story of a young man encountering life in a unique way; they shared a personal testimony meant to give meaning to and take insight from a life of turmoil and counter-conformity. With this goal in mind, they did well in choosing which characters to include and which parts of the story to emphasize. Even in showing to non-Mennonite audiences, the play captures ideals and insights beyond that of community which both represent Mennonite culture through common threads and relate to the non-Mennonite audience on its level.