The Menno Melange

The first ever World Out Games have begun this week in Montreal. This celebration of sport and tolerance opened with a Conservative cabinet minister getting booed off the stage. Sadly for the organizers of the event, that fact is making bigger news than the actual scheduling and results of the games themselves.

Many complained that Prime Minister himself did not attend. While I don’t support everything the PM has said, I think his absense is understandable. Is there any reason he would have been given a better welcome than a native Montrealer in Micheal Fortier?

I insist that it is important to tread in places you might not normally be welcomed or appreciated, in order to build bridges, but I’m glad our nation was spared the embarassment of being booed off the stage in his own country. Reading how his actions were labelled by kd lang et al as being intolerant really disturbed me. Is a group of people who boo a person off of stage simply because of his orientation really the most appropriate group to say who is and isn’t intolerant?

I love getting a chance to discuss with people, the jobs that they do that I am not familiar with. A perfect example of that is my own wife. As many of you know, Ana is the music coordinator a local nursing home. Much of what she does is playing music for the residents, in group and individual settings. Initially I suggested that her job title might more appropriately be “Wandering Minstrel”. She assured me that music was more than entertainment or soothing background noise, it was actually quite therapeutic. While she is not a certified music therapist, she often witnesses the therapeutic power of music, and tells me of lots of times when the residents she visits transform from being incoherent to clapping, singing along and even suggesting different songs.

For this job, she was surprised to have to learn new songs. It wasn’t a matter of going in and singing whatever song she thought would be most fun or rejuvenating. She had to learn the songs that these residents would have known and sung as children. Songs like My Wild Irish Rose, Bicycle Built for Two, Don’t Fence Me In and many others that I can’t remember and had never heard of. This got me thinking about what types of songs will be sung for my generation when we’re residing at similar institutions. A number of ideas crossed my mind.

The scariest was that the songs rooted deepest in our subconscious are the ones that are drilled into our head by mass media. Will they have to dress like Britney Spears to get the seniors born in the 1970’s and 80’s to return to coherence? I got a scary vision of a music therapist going home to her husband sixty years from now saying, “I didn’t think that Will Loewen was with it at all until I started singing that ‘Chicken Tonight’ jingle, and started singing along and doing the actions with me.” Frighteningly, there’s likely some truth in that.

Another idea I had was that it would be songs that I’ve even forgotten now. Songs of our childhood are locked away in our minds somewhere. Maybe it’s old Vacation Bible School songs I learned, like that Noah’s ark song … “elephants and kanga-roosies-roosies, children of the Lord.” Or maybe the hymns that were sung in church when I was growing up. Even now, Gott ist die Liebe has a certain therapeutic power to it.

I’d like to think that there are other more obvious songs that would help rejuvenate me. The song Ana sang to me at our wedding, any of the songs from our musical, or even more popular songs, maybe something by Stompin’ Tom. Time will tell.

We will soon have a completed rough draft of our musical. As we switch from writing and composing to editting, we will also get more info out to the general public, but here is a brief update. We are open to comments on what we’re doing so far.

Process
We usually write the scenes on their own without trying to tie a bunch of them together. That means we save the stringing of consistent themes and character development for the editting process. We expect that it will tie together well, and that we couldn’t have been too unknowingly inconsistent, but the next phase of the process will reveal that to us.

Characters
One of the joys of writing is watching characters emerge from blank pages, even if they are historical people. It sometimes feels like a journey to uncover what that person was really like, and sometimes it feels like I’ll have to apologize to their ghost for how I’ve changed them. Either way, it’s been fun looking at Felix Manz, his mother Anna, Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Luther and others. Those are complex men (I say men because there isn’t enough written about Anna to say much about her either way). None of them belong fully on either side of the ’sinners or saints’ spectrum, and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know the history well enough.

Key Details
We are focussing on the life and death of Felix Manz, mostly between the years of 1523 and 1527, taking place almost entirely in Zurich, with a few other locations thrown in, to add context.

Challenges
Making this musical into a success has a number of obstacles that will first need to be overcome.
- Interest: the story and characters are already interesting to me, but making them interesting from a commercial perspective isn’t automatic
- Preaching: if I’m true to what the early Anabaptists would have said, the dialogue will sound quite preachy, which may turn off some viewers. Can I find a more artistic way of conveying the same points? Will the audience understand?
- Objectivity: often our theological and cultural position presupposes that we will admire certain figures and despise others. One might assume that a musical of this time period from an Anabaptist perspective would be highly critical of Zwingli and suspicious of Luther. While that’s generally true, the study and writing process has definitely endeared me a little more to them.

Location and Time
Depending on how quickly we get through the next phases, we may be ready for a fall performance, or it could also be a spring performance as well. The location we’ve been talking about most seriously is St. Jacobs, which would be appropriate since its thriving tourism industry revolves around its Mennonite reputation.

Name
Our working title so far is “Shadows of Grossmunster” or some variation of that, ie. “The Shadows of Grossmunster”, “In the Shadows of Grossmunster”, “Up from the Shadows”, “Up from the Shadows of Grossmunster”
Any thoughts? Do you bring up certain good or bad conotations?

My dad recently sent me a copy of an interview he did with Larry Cornies, editor of the London Free Press about the new Ontario symbol. My dad designed the last one, which Ontario has had for over 30 years. This new symbol is quite contraversial for a couple reasons, as stated in the article.

1. Many have said it looks unfriendly, like poison ivy. I think it’s just ugly (not that I’m biased).

2. Many feel it was a waste of money, when that money could have been spent on more important government services. Let me enlighten you. When my dad did it, it cost $10,000. The new symbol? $219,000. That much money was spent on re-doing a perfectly good symbol (in my, and many others’, opinion). Why did they change it? Good question. Beats me.

To me, this is a sad reality check on some of our governments priorities.

1. Jobs
Yes, I finally found one more job to balance out my schedule nicely. There’s a quaint restaurant in town here, that doubles as a museum for Tavistock, fully equipped with train paraphernalia (old train crossing lights, model trains and letter lifters–if you actually care what that is, feel free to ask) Part of the restaurant used to be the town’s old bowling alley, and the remnants of the lanes are now the table and counter tops in the restaurant. There are also old pictures of the town all over the restaurant. I mainly work in the kitchen and help with catering. I find I’m quite enjoying this job, more than I ever thought I would (ie. working in a kitchen). The staff are really friendly, and the bosses (they are a couple) are amazing, too. They certainly put their staff first. We often have theological discussions while I am filling cole slaw cups or slicing tomatoes.

The organ playing is going really well, and I am now playing at 3 weddings. I can definately hear the “cha-ching” in my head, not because I like money, but because we need to pay off debts, so this is helpful. I still lead sing-alongs at the Bonnie Brea 3 times a month, and I seem to have a regular following of residents who are always there to hear me. One of them always brings a tape recorder and records everything I play.

My job at PeopleCare as Music Coordinator is also going wonderfully well. The choir I lead is going strong, as we always have more coming then there are music folders lately. I guess I should make some more. I could write a whole blog entry about my experiences there, and what I see and learn. Maybe I will sometime. I finally feel like I know who all the residents are now (it does take a while), and am starting to figure out ways to connect with them. For example, there is a resident who always tells me he used to play harmonica. However, I sadly noticed that there is no harmonica in his room. I happen to have found one in my piano bench, so I’m going to bring it in next time, and see if he would like to give it a try, for old times sake.

2. Roots: The mini-series that changed history
This must seem like an odd entry for a “catch-up” sorta email, but this mini-series has certainly taken up a lot of my time lately. It’s a 6-part mini-series, that takes up about 12 hours. I watched it twice. That’s a lot of hours. I wanted to talk about it a bit for those of you who have seen it but forgotten about it, and more especially for those of you who have not seen it, and maybe even haven’t heard of it. This is a mini-series (apparently among the first mini-series ever made) that was made in 1977 about slavery. It is based on Alex Haley’s book “ROOTS”, which he wrote about his family history, starting with Kunta Kinte in Africa, being captured and brought to America, and going through the next 4 generations of slavery until the abolition. Not only is this movie important for everyone to see, but it was REALLY well done. I fell in love with the characters, and that’s why I wanted to see it again. The other admirable thing about the series is that it was very contraversial and almost not made, because it’s an American made movie with white people as the “bad guys” and black people as the “good guys”. But they made the movie anyway, and it is so important and educational. Yeah, we all learn about slavery in school, but this movie makes you live it out with the characters, many facets of it.

For Example:
-We first see the life of an African tribe (somewhere around the Gambia river) and how they lived, and how many were captured unfairly from their home lands

-We see the horrors of the slave ships, the dehumanizing and desensitizing effects on the so-called Christian captain of the ship, and we see how engrained slavery is in the Americans, who only see the Africans as “cargo”

-We see the slave auctions, how the slaves were inspected like animals

-We see their lives on the plantations, and I was impressed that many slave owners in the movie were portrayed as good people. This was a reality. Slavery was so engrained in the society of those times, that even good-hearted people would have slaves without batting an eyelash. They would treat their slaves respectfully and embrace them as their own family, but they would still be slaves. This is a spine-tingling fact, that people can do evil without knowing it, especially when it is socially acceptable, and do it in a “nice” way.

-We see the reality of the slave catchers, who brutally beat, deform, mutliate or kill the slaves they caught, and slave thieves, who kidnap slaves and sell them off again, separating them from their familes. We see the violation and abuse of women by their masters, who know that their only lot in life is to produce children (with their master in some cases)

-We see an unexpected aspect of slavery, which is that rather than helping each other escape, many slaves kept each other accountable to stay, as all slaves would be punished if one ran away

-We see the abolition of slavery, and the resistance of whites to it, the beginnings of the KKK (or some partner group), and how the beginnings of freedom marked no change in the terrorizing of blacks for a long while after.

This movie sparked so many emotions in me. I know some may be thinking “slavery is SO history, why think about it today…why is this movie relevant?”, but I have a number of responses to that. Slavery has been around forever, and there are still forms of it today, although with different names. Also, the insight we can gain about humankind from slavery times is immeasurable, and still applies today. The socially accepted evil of slavery then rears its ugly head as another kind of socially accepted evils today (some more broad than others); Racial and religious profiling, driving cars unnecessarily, white supremacist propaganda, wars, over-consumption, reality TV shows, obsession with money, pop culture, corporations, fill in the blanks.

3. Our Garden
Due to much rain, our garden is prospering nicely. We have had to harvest everyday for the past couple days, to keep on top of our beans and peas. Our tomato plants are almost as tall as me now. I must say, nothing beats fresh vegtables.

4. Our MCC term
Will and I had our interview with MCC last month for a 3 year volunteer term, and we were declared eligible. So, we are now in the waiting period, to hear from MCC Akron about positions that would best suit us. Are top choice is in Belfast, working for an organization called Embrace, that deals with immigration, and other social issues. Our second choice is in El Salvador, educating pastors there in Anabaptist theology. We are, however, open to going wherever God leads us, wherever our skills best fit. We are excited about this opportunity.

At the minister’s conference in Edmonton, I did something that I’m rarely bold enough to do. I went up to the microphone and asked a question. After hearing about the spiritual path of the early Anabaptists, I asked what we can learn from them about ecumenism.

It set up an easy answer that I could have given myself, that we need not copy everything they did, and certainly our contemporary ecumenical efforts are a way that we’ve improved upon the Anabaptist legacy. I should have phrased the question better, but even then I don’t know if the answer would have been any different.

We had been asked to think how we could apply 16th century Anabaptist spirituality to our 21st century churches. In other words, we were being encouraged to sell our congregations on the Anabaptist legacy. However, part of that legacy is a certain narrow-minded outlook that all of us try to avoid, even if that means we replace it with another kind of narrow-minded outlook. My question was intended to be along these lines. How can we sell our congregants on that spiritual mindset when part of it runs fundamentally counter to the core of our pluralistic society?

Now that I’ve rephrased the question, I’ll try to venture an answer. One might think that the call of Christ (and the Anabaptists) was to be counter-cultural, and so we should oppose the pluralistic element of our society. However, at the time, the Anabaptists weren’t more or less closed-minded than anyone else. It was the Reformation, everybody was calling everybody else the anti-Christ. If you can trace your roots back to a religious group in the Reformation that didn’t get labelled as the anti-Christ, it’s because no one took them seriously. The only obvious difference with the Anabaptists was that they didn’t have state support required to punish “heretics”. (Unless you count Münster, but let’s be serious, those guys were nuts. That’s by far the exception and not the rule.)

The first building point that I see though, is the commitment to peace. Sure, they labelled everyone, Zwingli, Luther, the Pope, the Jews, etc. as antichrists. Sure their ultimate goal was to convert everyone to their side. These are not building blocks for ecumenism. But at least they respected their right to live. There are all sorts of stories of Anabaptists at the gallows evangelising to the executioner as well as to the audience. I’d take evangelism over vengance and seeking retaliation any day.

The second thing is their commitment to authenticity. All the hype around adult baptism was because they viewed infant baptism as insincere by definition. Church membership should be voluntary. All participation in the body of Christ/the church should be voluntary. Micheal Sattler said that if he was forced to fight in the war, he would rather fight alongside the Muslim Turks than join the Christian army, because he would rather help those who didn’t know any better, than join those that thought they were being good Christians simply because they were following orders. In dialogues between churches or between faiths, participation has to be sincere. If anyone involved is simply extending tolerance or open-mindedness because that’s what their supposed to do, it’s doomed to failure. To be true to one’s own belief structure, a little bit of closed-mindedness is necessary. Allowing someone the right to speak, out of tolerance, is simply that, it’s not really listening. Forbearance may be a better word than tolerance.

So the early Anabaptists are not good role models for ecumenical dialogue, but we can still learn something from them. We can however try to embody their peace and sincerity to enrich our work and our discussions with those of other religions and denominational groups.

So now it’s back to life as usual after our week away. In some ways, it was a week off, and in other ways, coming back home is a break too. Our days started with opening worship at 8:30am and closed when final worship ended at 8:30pm. We did have meal breaks and coffee breaks in there, but we were kept occupied. Here were some highlights:

Minister’s Conference
Before the rest of the conference began, the ministers and their wives etc. of Mennonite Church Canada were invited to attend a conference of their own. The key speakers were C. Arnold Snyder and Sue Steiner, both Ontario people that we have a lot of respect for. Arnold spoke in depth on the topic of Anabaptist Spirituality, while Sue spoke about analyzing our own congregational spirituality in our churches and different ways of nurturing it.

For a summary of Arnold’s presentation, Click here. Tim Chesterton was there and took notes more attentively than I did. He also introduced himself to us at one point as someone who reads our blog from time to time. I recognized the name as a blog that I have also read, but didn’t remember him as being part of MC Canada. Turns out he’s an Anglican who’s just interested in Anabaptism. His blog is actually quite interesting as well.

Fort Edmonton Park
One of our tour options for the Thursday afternoon was an historical recreation park. We chose it as a way of getting outdoors (a task which was otherwise quite difficult). It far exceded our expectations. It had four separate areas showing different time periods, with period correct food available all along the way, plus a real train, a streetcar, a working penny arcade and a midway. Even though the penny arcade took quarters instead of pennies, it was great. For 25 cents you could test your tolerance to electric shock. After inserting your money, you grabbed the two poles and turned until you couldn’t handle it anymore. Ana let go immediately, while I made it as high as the machine could go, which we were told was a rite of passage for the male staff. There were a few disappointments, I couldn’t ring the bell with the hammer swinging thing at the midway, the carousel wasn’t working, and the haunted house wasn’t even haunted (more about that in a later post).

Preach Off
The entertainment for the Thursday evening was a preaching contest. It’s better than it sounds. The contestants, including myself, were given a scripture passage before lunch on Thursday and then were supposed to give a three mniute sermon about it that evening. I was given Genesis 27:11. I didn’t bother writing down any notes for a three minute sermon, hoping I could just shoot from the hip. The other contestants had a lot of notes, some props, and had generally done more preparation than I had. I did however undo a few buttons on my shirt as a demonstration, and I was able to talk until about fifteen seconds left in my time. We all got obscure passages, and the sermons ranged from funny to quasi-serious and had various creative elements, and the whole thing was a lot of fun. I didn’t make any points during the serious discussions about the budget or other voting issues during the week, but I was remembered for my 3-minute sermon. Good times.

As far as other site-seeing, we did make it to the mall, but not Whyte Ave. The area of Edmonton we were in was quite pedestrian unfriendly. We opted out of the conference supper plan in order to save a bit of money and to experience some local fare. The part of town that we were in was full of just major chains, and since we didn’t have a car, we had to walk a way to get to them, usually without sidewalks. No car also meant that we didn’t get to get out of the city either. Ah well, we’ll get to see rural Alberta some other time I hope.