being mennonite in baltimore

over the past few months i've heard no less than three of my close friends pause in a conversation about dating and say something like:

"... but also part of me just really wants to date a mennonite."

which is a little bit funny, because none of them were exactly raised as mennonites, and all have been or are currently in romantic relationships with non-mennonites. what is it about these mennonite boys, seriously... (someone suggested, once, that they've internalized enough messages about peace that they just seem nicer than your random american man. this may be true.)

last weekend on our way back from harrisonburg, Meg & I were talking about  the demographics of EMU and the rapidly falling % of students from an Anabaptist background. i was being a little bit alarmist but when i tried to admit that, Meg shook her head. "but i am alarmed," she said. "now i'm like, 'i have to be mennonite!'"

~

it's so difficult to explain mennonite-ness to people outside of this tiny community. i was looking up the numbers recently: in the US, there are 76 million catholics and some 150 million protestants of various denominations.

number of mennonites? 110,000, give or take a few thousand.

Meg and one of the girls in the apartment downstairs were listening to a TED talk about dating not too long ago, and she was telling me that this one computer-programmer lady had analyzed online dating sites and then written an algorithm to figure out how many compatible people she would be able to find in her city. it was some ridiculously low number, like five people in half a million, or something like that.

sometimes, living outside of the mennonite enclaves, i feel like there is no chance i will ever meet someone i'm compatible with.

~

there are things that matter more to me than 'being mennonite,' but...

but: i would really love to be in a relationship where i don't have to explain rook, or dutch blitz, or the few vestiges of pennsylvania dutch that have made it into my vocabulary. where i don't have to explain the last names; the abundance of 'yoders,' 'swartzendrubers,' 'herrs,' 'hostetlers,' 'kreiders.' where i can use the acronyms -- MCC, EMM, MDS, EMU -- without spelling them out. where i can speak in shorthand that's easily understood, the quick reference to the conferences that people grew up in as explanation for their understanding of scripture or their political leanings, for example, or the meaning behind names like Dirk Willems. or John Ruth, even, the way i've seen his book in more houses than anyone could reasonably expect. Rudy Weibe. Julia Spicher Kasdorf. all the cultural connotations buzzing around each of these names.

it's more than just a specific way of being christian, is the thing (although i will be very surprised if i end up marrying a man who doesn't consider himself a pacifist). it's a small, specific culture that i belong to, and that i want to give to the generation that follows me: knowing the harmonies to the hymnals, the mennonite game, houses with a copy of the martyr's mirror stashed away somewhere, pork and sauerkraut on new year's day,

potlucks that vary in what food is present but not in how it feels to sit around the tables with a group of people who know you and your parents and  your grandparents and quite possibly your second or third or fourth cousins. all the mennonite jokes. the cookbooks. dutch blitz tournaments with the youth group kids. church retreats where you might play a dozen games of rook in a row.

~

"so have you found a young man yet?" my grandpa asked me over christmas break.

"no," i laughed. "no, i don't have time for that." and that's true, for sure -- i don't have time to do all the things that i want to do on my own at the moment; it's impossible to imagine placing more demands on my time right now. 

but also ... part of me just really wants to date a mennonite. so it might have to wait until i move, either back to the 'burg or to lancaster; back to my mennonite enclave. ;)

the Mennonite bubble

breakfast today with a not-even-that-close friend from EMU was reminding me about how it felt to spend four years tucked securely inside the "Mennonite bubble."

it's been somewhat surprising to me that over the past year I haven't felt all that nostalgic for being in college. I do miss how intense everything felt, all the time; how alive and awake my brain felt, jumping from organic chemistry to a close reading of Paradise Lost, from human physiology to investigating the links between language and religion. but when I graduated from EMU, I knew even then that I had taken all that I could from my four years there. I had grown and changed and been set on a path, and the only thing to do was keep walking. like I wrote at the time, I was ready to do, to try, to see if I could make it, out in the real world, outside of the boundaries of my tiny, safe school.

"This field is getting too small," she said.
"Don't you know anyone else
To fall in love with?"

 -Robert Bly, "Conversations With The Soul"

that's kind of how it was, I guess - EMU felt large & spacious when I was 18 years old, and in the course of four years it grew smaller and smaller as I grew larger. maybe the simple way to say it is just this: I outgrew being a student.

that being said, though - I am missing being part of a community that speaks the same language, that cares about the same things I care about, that understands the identity that I have been growing into. I did not outgrow my church- and friend- and intellectual-communities in the same way that I outgrew the institution of EMU, and I think that is why I miss Harrisonburg so much.

and so. breakfast, this morning. a tiny ache in the heart: all the people I miss, all the conversations I haven't been having. I miss how easy the art of conversation was with people at EMU, how quickly we could jump between things like: young-adult Mennonite identity, work with MCC & what it means, the theology of different churches we've attended, professors we all know, places we've all been.

I want to belong to a community again, one that speaks this language. I don't know how long it will be until I end up in such a place, but I am going to do my best to steer myself in that direction.

a break from our regularly scheduled programming

I have had a whirlwind last three days: Saturday in Harrisonburg, Sunday in DC, dinner last night with visiting family members. 

I didn't decide to head South until Thursday evening, when I realized that my parents were definitely going down to help my brother with some car issues and also watch him play in the alumni-student soccer match. I stayed at my aunt's place in Massanutten, which is where this daffodil picture is from:

A brief stop on discipleship hill to visit my writing-tree...

Then back to DC to meet up with Thia's family, who were visiting from Colorado. We went to the fish market near the junction of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers...

Rode the metro (all 9 of us...what an adventure)...

Walked by the White House, where I just happened to run into my great-aunt and -uncle, who are visiting the area from Iowa. They knew Thia's grandfather - file this one under #MennoniteGame...

And finished the day out by retreating to Thia's uncle's apartment in downtown DC, where we cooked up the fish we bought at the market.

Then, yesterday night, I had dinner with my great-aunt and -uncle, which was lovely. We talked for a long time about family, work, food, all sorts of Mennonite news...I was so happy to have family around. It's funny how being around family, even if they are people you haven't seen for a while, somehow makes a place feel more like home.

reading back through my blog is fun

I've been going back through my blog to add tags to my posts and I came across this, which was just sort of sitting there as a draft. I don't know why I never published it.

Mennonite Writer's Conference: draft 3/31/12 

This weekend I was able to attend 'Mennonite/s Writing VI: Solos and Harmonies,' a writing conference hosted at EMU. It was an amazing experience. 

Throughout the weekend there were all sorts of presentations, panel discussions, poetry readings, singings, and book signings. I have a ton of new and exciting thoughts in my head... 

One of the most interesting things for me was attending the banquet this evening. Not very many EMU students were in attendance (the table I was sitting at held most of us); the rest of the people at the banquet were professors from Bluffton, Bethel, Goshen, Conrad Grebel; retired professors; people associated with Mennonite Media; editors of things like The Mennonite; authors of poetry, novels and nonfiction. 

I have to admit that I didn't know all that many of the writers that were present this weekend, the exceptions being Rudy Wiebe, Jeff Gundy, and Julia Spicher Kasdorf. I learned quickly, though: about writers of my grandparents' generation, and my parents' generation, and the atmosphere of things now in the world of Mennonite publishing - the way things will be for my generation. 

At the banquet, 4 writers were honored, two men and two women, interspersed with discussion about Rudy Wiebe's first novel, Peace Will Destroy Many. It was absolutely fascinating for me to hear and think about the community that these authors lived in; the things they have spent their lives pushing back against. 

All of the authors honored were older Mennonites, and every single piece of writing talked about was published after Wiebe's Peace Will Destroy Many - which is a novel that created quite the controversy, if you aren't aware. His novel is about a Canadian Mennonite community and their struggle in how to think about conscientious objection to war as well as moral issues and communication within their church. The book changed a lot of things for Mennonite writers; here is a great resource by Wiebe about the reaction of the Mennonite church to his novel.

Actually, I think the reason I didn't publish it to my blog was that I wanted to write something more, about how the weekend felt rather than what I learned. It felt beautiful and hopeful to me, so many artists gathered from this faith tradition that I belong to, this faith tradition that has such a tenuous and anxious relationship to art. And the women - ah, I wish I had tried to finish writing this last year, because now I don't remember it as clearly as I'd like to. But the best thing, maybe, was this one older women - in her eighties, maybe? - who was recognized at the banquet. I believe she might have been the first Mennonite woman to have a book of fiction published? Maybe not, but anyway, she was given a microphone and rambled on and on about people she remembered, about what church was like for her as a child, about growing up and gaining a voice.

And also all the connections shimmering just under the surface of things; that was maybe the other best thing. Like my great-uncle's brother introducing Omar Eby, and like eavesdropping on Jeff Gundy, who somehow has a connection to a different great-uncle, and like hearing all the things about Rudy Wiebe, who I first heard about from my uncle who is the pastor of a church in Lancaster (where I first met Julia Kasdorf.)

And, you know, that sort of paragraph, right there? Is one of my favorite things about Mennonites.

JoHoYo (or, Mennonites are weird)

I had been thinking about this all day, yesterday, and then I forgot to write it down.

---

A few weeks ago I ended up finding myself at the same church as my boss, a funky little Mennonite church outside DC. And I've kept going back (usually). This week he asked me if I was a church over the weekend, which I wasn't (I decided reading through Matthew in the sun in the park was the best possible use of my time, haha); and when he learned I wasn't, proceeded to tell me that the sermon had been about John Howard Yoder. 

"I think I'll have to go back and re-read some of those books," he said. "I read The Politics of Jesus. Good stuff."

I almost laughed. I was having flashbacks to classes at EMU, hearing classmates fondly refer to "JoHoYo." 

I really am in a subculture. Mennonites are weird. But I have to admit I'm thankful... JoHoYo did, after all, give this intern an interesting (obscure) point in common with a tenured PI. :)


EDIT// to clarify, by saying "Mennonites are weird," I mean, "isn't it strange that two Mennonites from different generations can end up working in a government funded lab and know immediately what's going on when the name John Howard Yoder comes up?"

it's the little things...

yesterday The Housemate said to me, "tomorrow evening looks like rain. let's make good food."

so far i've done most of the grocery shopping & cleaning, and she's done most of the cooking, and we've ended up with:

tomatillo salsa
spicy chicken tofu soup
pesto
peanut butter chocolate banana smoothies
banana pudding pie

I think I should make note of this; rainy day = food prep time.
mmm. now it's time to tackle the dishes. ;)

(it's sooo good. try it! try it! I even left you the recipe!)

EDIT:// apparently it's true that cooking can bring good conversation into the kitchen; i was just telling the story of when i learned to make a chocolate angel food cake with my nana last year. and then i asked The Housemate if she had ever heard of the dessert graham cracker fluff (also called wooflepoof, i told her, to which she said what? wifflepuff? and then i said never mind) and when i did a google search for the dessert to try to explain it, this is the first thing that came up. oh, what a small, small Mennonite world.