CMW Journal

In This Issue

About every sixth Saturday morning, five writers gather around a cozy breakfast table in an Indianapolis home to eat, discuss current events and read to each other our most recent writings. J. Daniel Hess, retired professor of communication at Goshen College, pulled us together about ten years ago in order to encourage creative writing. Admission to the group was not based on prior writing experience or success, but simple desire. We quickly discovered a comfort level with each other that has allowed for honest, personal and insightful conversation—as well as invaluable feedback.

Our occupations vary: a poet, pastor, professor, psychiatrist and physician. Some of us have published essays or books, stories or poems; others of us have not. But at the breakfast table we are equals, eager to listen and share. Our time together has inspired us to write more—and better—than we would have done alone.

Recently we found ourselves discussing Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, which in turn led us into a discussion of what it means to be Mennonite. Each of us understood, and had experienced, being Mennonite in significantly different ways. Having already been invited to create the contents for this issue of CMW Journal, we had a sudden “aha” moment—we would use Mennonite Identity as our common theme.

In this issue—through personal essay, memoir and poetry—we explore the twists and turns, the obstacles and landmarks, that have contributed to, and helped us define, what it means for each of us to be Mennonite.

J. Daniel Hess starts us off with an intriguing autobiographical essay, “My Mennonite Identity,” which describes his journey from a conservative Mennonite home with a thick Pennsylvania heritage, to going off to a more open-minded Mennonite college, then on to secular graduate school, then a detour to what was supposed to be a temporary stint teaching at Goshen College, and finally back home for his parents’ 50thwedding anniversary. The circuitous journey is exciting, painful, enlightening and ultimately integrative. Despite times of rejection and tearing away, many worlds come together to form a new Mennonite identity that honors the good in all he has experienced.

In recent years, Hesshas been writing poetry. In his “Three Garden Poems” he reflects on his relationship to the animal kingdom: considering how to share fruit with the robins, how to imitate the seed shucking of a cardinal, and how to make peace with a black snake. The desire for harmony—never to be fully realized—becomes more apparent in each poem.

Martha Yoder Maust, like Hess, comes from a multi-generational heritage of Mennonite forebears, but she was nurtured in a more international context. In her identity essay, “Branching Out from One Foundation,” she relates her experiences with Mennonites in Argentina and Israel, across the United States and Canada, and at three Mennonite World Conferences. Along the way she has also engaged with other Christian traditions, as well as other religions, and has found the historical “dividing wall of hostility” being replaced by bridges. Intentionally mixing her metaphors, she sees her Mennonite identity rooted in the foundation of Jesus Christ while also branching out into greater diversity and dialogue.

In her personal essay, “Gleaners,” Yoder Maustdigs into the struggle to live ecologically in a throw-away society. She values and gathers what others ignore or disdain. Gleaning thrown-out food from dumpsters becomes a metaphor for the productive way we can gather insights from a variety of sources in order to create something more enriching.

Two years ago my mother died, and the way she died reflected her free-spirited, Auntie Mame personality. In my (Ryan Ahlgrim’s) autobiographical vignette, “Mom’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Party,” I recount her final wishes and how my family carried them out. She passed on to me a commitment to creative and courageous individual expression—a quality which has not always mixed well with Mennonite identity.

My second personal essay, “Bogart and Being Mennonite,” explores how I came to terms with the tensions between the values of my parents—who had no Mennonite background—and the values of the Mennonite congregation and college that nourished my mind and spirit as I grew up. The result is a definition of being Mennonite that is truly “naked” Anabaptist.

Unlike the others in our writers’ group, Rodney Deaton had no Mennonite influences prior to joining the church as an adult. This perhaps gives him an advantage in being able to understand and embrace the soldiers—traumatized by the Iraq war—with whom he does therapy. His lack of traditional Mennonite indoctrination, as well as the influence of his maternal grandmother, also gives him a clearer view of our hypocrisies. His personal essay, “An Aggressive Mennonite,” pulls no punches as he challenges us to re-think what it means to empathize, to seek peace, to know grace, and to be Mennonite.

Rounding out our writings is a set of persona poems by Shari Wagner. Inspired by frequent visits to her uncle’s farm, and stories told by her aunt, “The Farm Wife” series of poems embodies Wagner’s curiosity regarding what life might have been like if she had lived on a farm like so many generations of her family before her. In these poems we meet a conflicted woman: anchored to the land and the solidity of her cows, yet dreaming of the ocean and sometimes taking trips without a destination. She ruminates on the meaning of snakes and tornadoes, trees and grain. She also experiences the grief of eventually leaving the farm. One of the poems, “The Farm Wife Sells Her Cows,” was featured by Garrison Keillor on his radio program,The Writer’s Almanac.

Throughout this collection of writings is a profound gratitude for a vision and set of qualities we can identify as Mennonite. But getting to these gems is not easy. They must be mined in our past and in our present. We have to get scratched up and dirty. Slag has to be cut away and left behind. And what one person finds may not be exactly the same gems someone else finds. If this writers’ group is any indication, being Mennonite has a rich and diverse future.

--Ryan Ahlgrim, Guest Editor