… a little nostalgia …

What surprizes me, though it shouldn’t by now, on a trip Calgary to Saskatoon and Hague  (north of Saskatoon), is the giant open prairies, fields miles long and wide, being seeded by very large tractors and seeding machines. My sister and brother-in-law, farmers, say a John Deere seeding drill or Air Hoe Drill can span up to 90 feet. How is that possible?  I did see a tractor pulling a drill that looked like about 10 feet, but a 10-footer is highly unusual anymore in this part of the world. The giant equipment is dazzling and I find myself wishing I was operating one of those for a while. Those a/c cabs and cushioned seats are amazing and you don’t see a field where a seeding line is crooked. GPS knows everything.  When we Janzen kids were younger and farming with our dad, we were driving open-cab tractors without power steering, pulling 12-foot seeding discs or 10-foot cultivators and, try as we would, invariably there would be glitches and curves in the furrows we were cutting. Maybe my brothers’ were straight. 

For me, none of that seems so very long ago, though in years, it goes back quite a few. Our fields back then were not giant.  A 50-acre field was big and would take a long, long time to seed and, three months later to combine, all this done under clouds of dust and, during harvest, often the most itchy dust, especially if it was barley.  

I have some nostalgia for all that, and sometimes I begin to sympathize with older people (that’s actually me now) who eventually become more and more quiet because well, the world has moved so far past them in just one lifetime. The current generation cannot imagine life without the internet and wifi and computer games, let alone a 10-foot cultivator on a small field. Our dad, on a full herd, milked about 30 cows. A retired farmer near Hague said today, in that area, it’s sometimes 1,000 cows. A herd of 100 is too small to survive in the industry, he said. 

So last weekend I sat with about 100 others at the Hague Museum, listening to a part of their story, and mine, the exodus to Mexico, back in the early 1920s. (Bill Janzen … Remembering the Hague/Osler Mennonite Migration to Mexico … message me and I’ll send it to you). There was no parting of the waters for them, but the Mexican government had come out of a very long and costly war and was looking for farmers to settle their north country.  The Mennonites had come to Canada in the 1870s, and to the Hague/Osler (the government had called it a reserve) area in the early 1900s, set up their villages, schools, churches, glad to be in this country that had provided them assurances to practise their own version of Mennonite faith, including, and especially, freedom to use german as the teaching language in their churches and schools, along with their own teaching materials. 

That was the main thing, but as World War 1 turned the world upside down, the german-speaking Mennonites, like others also, became less welcome and the government began to insist on them flying the Union Jack at their schools and teaching their kids at least some english.  The government built public schools accessible to the Mennonite villages, and eventually began to fine the families when the Mennonites kept refused the english schools. After pleading with both the provincial and the federal governments to cut them some slack, and being rejected by both levels of government, they began to look for another country. God had called them to live out their faith in a certain way, it was felt, and if that meant yet another migration, well, they would.  It took a while, but they found Mexico.  Conform: The Mennonite Migration to Mexico of the 1920s is now freely available for viewing on YouTube.

Not all of them moved. Those that stayed inevitably began to integrate more. Our grandfather had planned to move but there were delays and eventually, he stayed;  our dad, as a result, became one who attended public school and learned english. So I’m Canadian by birth. I might have been Mexican, or even Bolivian. 

The Mennonites have multiplied and have migrated frequently since that earlier migration to Mexico. About 5000 did leave back in 1922 but from those early years, there are now probably close to 300,000 low german speaking Mennonites in Mexico, Belize, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Colombia; most recently some are settling in Suriname. Bolivia alone has 124 colonies, with an average of about 1000 people per colony.  Of those who left Canada, many have returned over the last 40 years or so to Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and some to Saskatchewan.  They migrate, usually for economic reasons but also to be able to keep their ways. Schools. Churches. Language. In Alberta they’re not allowed to live in colonies and villages, but they do seem, eventually, to find each other. 

Listening to that migration story last weekend, along with others sitting in lawn chairs surrounded by buildings from decades back (it’s a museum yard) it becomes an experience different from simply reading a book, or listening to a 40-min podcast. I’m sure we guests were all inside our own recollections, but listening, then eating and visiting together undoubtedly reminded us it’s not possible to have a history alone.  

We are the next generation and we’re well on our way out as well. Most of us present knew something of our history, at least from memories shared with us by our grandparents or parents or neighbors.  Our histories are personal, but they’re also collective, and more than speeches at important events. They are what shapes us still, and what contributes to shaping our kids and grandkids and how we relate to our neighbors, reminders that we are all affected by each other’s experiences and decisions … part of each other’s stories. Our parents’ decision to stay in Blumenheim (8 miles S of Hague) made them part of an evolving community. The village is still there, and outwardly some things look as they did a long time ago. Cars, and telephones and all manner of media weren’t there when they settled.  Our grandmother’s decision to move, in 1948, to Mexico, made her part of a community there, but her leaving Saskatchewan also affected those who remained. None of us are stories by ourselves.  

Renfrew. Gr 5-8

Hague, the area where I attended elementary and later, high school, becomes a complicated memory when I sit with 100 people, some of whom were our neighbors, some with whom I attended elementary in a 2-room country school, some with whom I rode the bus when we started high school in town, some with whom I sat in church during our growing up years, the german church in Blumenheim, and later, an english church in the next village. Our memories are personal, but our stories belong to each other.  It was a good event.

… that 2 or 3 thing …

Kathy and I were in a church service last Sunday where two smaller, rural, and smaller town churches were coming together to worship, and after that, a potluck lunch. Not such big deal, but any time that happens, each church, and each person attending, perhaps unconsciously but also, yes, leaves some of their identity behind.  Family gatherings work the same way. When that doesn’t happen, get togethers usually end up being less than satisfying events. When it does, they are great, as it was last week.  

At lunch, one of the older gentlemen mentioned that for precisely that reason, he hopes our provincial election (May 29) will result in a minority government.  If you’re not from Canada, that means whoever elects the most seats in the legislature did, however, not get a majority, and so, to form government, they have to cooperate with some of the other parties.  Such a strange idea anymore, since every party guns for an ‘absolute majority’ so they can govern with less of the annoying opposition to hold them accountable.  You would think that with all of them saying how much they believe in our democratic system, they would, now and then, at least thank the opposition for doing their job. It’s often said that some of Canada’s most effective governments have been those with a minority of seats. But to make that work, there have to be some adults in the room, some maturity … some, who know what it means to leave some of their entitlements and their furious identities off the table when there is real work to be done. 

Canadian Foodgrains Bank is a bank that includes 15 members. All are Canadian Christian agencies representing denominations on a range from the most liberal to the conservatives and the charismatics and the more traditional. They might not be attending each other’s churches,  but in their common mission ‘to end hunger’ they work together and consistently rate as one of the more credible organizations in Canada …  providing emergency food assistance and, in many countries, with local partners, developing better farming methods. My point is … to be part of this large international effort, each of the 15 members must give up something … . It’s not possible to be anything but a disruption at an ecumenical table like that, if you don’t leave some of your identity and even some of the distinctives you hold dear at home. 

Earlier this past week, I sat in on a zoom seminar with Karl Koop. Mr Koop teaches at Canadian Mennonite University in Wpg and was presenting to an Alberta inter-church group about the early story of Anabaptism.  A little to my surprize, he reminded us that way back there in the early and mid 1500s it wasn’t a coherent, ‘let’s all believe and agree to this’ movement at all. His summary comment was about how diverse the movement was in its beginnings, and how not static it was.  Non static would mean it was dynamic, which means … it engaged and moved with different ideas and developed along more than one line of thinking.  Early Anabaptists were not separate from ‘the world’. They were actively engaged in social concerns., as just one example Mr Koop named. The Schleitheim Confession (1527 of the Swiss Brethren) is a statement about Baptism, the Ban, Breaking of Bread, Separation from the World, Pastors in the Church, The Sword, and The Oath. It’s the Confession that sometimes, in our modern day, is considered a foundational statement of Anabaptism, but said Koop, it was one among other several statements and beliefs that emerged during those years. 

Also last week, I heard someone talk about Anabaptism as about Peace and Pacifism and non-violence.  It was their assumption that Anabaptism was pretty much defined by that. A Peaceful people, committed to non-violence. And, appealing as that description probably is today,  that also didn’t describe the early anabaptists.  It described some of them. Others developed other interpretations of scripture; beliefs adapted and evolved. 

St Paul wrote many letters to early churches … a kind of Pauline World Conference and he tried to keep in touch with them. But in any of his letters, it feels a little like he is herding sheep.  There is tension and stretching and pushing around on how this emerging sense of God among them was to work. Read 1 Corinth 5, 6, and 7 for example. Paul had strong opinions on many things, but my guess is that as any human being in a world that is in itself always dynamic, his views and opinions also changed. How could they not as he engaged the various groups, each of whom brought their own philosophical and cultural backgrounds into their new-found faith. It was never cookie cutter clean and coherent, I’m pretty sure, and at times, Paul and other early leaders settled for the things they could agree on rather than insisting on everything. 

All of which is a a good thing.  Entrenchment and dogged hanging on to a single identity may make us feel redeemed and right, even righteous, but it seldom leads to good things. Compromise helps even on doctrine and traditions that we might have thought almost sacred.  Why else would Jesus say that ‘where two or three are gathered together, there he is also? (Mtt 18:20).  God can be anywhere, and is everywhere, all the time, so why this odd little comment about us needing to be 2 or 3 … and then he shows up? A bit odd, but my guess is that Jesus knew that when 2 or 3 or 15 are together, there is at least a chance we will learn from each other, and we will let go a little of our identity and some of our entitlements.  When we are together, it’s harder to keep our weapons loaded and if we spend enough time together, we may even stop bringing them. That’s what faspa and coffee and cold drinks on a hot summer day is about. We become a little less about ourselves. 

I’m glad that our forefathers, the Anabaptists, may not have been as coherent and unified as they are often made out to be now, 500 years later. How could they have been? Communication was difficult. Travel was slow. Writing and publishing and distribution was barely happening.  Different leaders developed followers but they didn’t have easy access to each other to share or to debate their interpretations of scripture and of the life and times in which they were living. 

For all that, we have branded them, it seems to me, and I suppose that’s inevitable with the passing of time. But to know how diverse they were back then makes me a little less harsh with the diversity we live with today, and a little hopeful that in time we will come out of the trenches of current politics and theology and religion and the pandemic hangover … a little more relaxed and less wary of each other.  Cause that, apparently, is when God also shows up.