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The Amish have it down. They know exactly how to deal with Jesus's injunction about worldliness--being in it, but not of it. They've chosen their culture--some variation on 18th century European peasant culture, or something--and stuck with it, proclaiming that way of life to be just exactly what Jesus was talking about when he demanded his followers to be "in, but not of."
The rest of us still have some problems. I drive a car, for instance, even two of them. Is that being too much "of the world?" We eat humus and fry bread and enchilladas--not to mention an occasional North Atlantic cod filet from Culver's. I'm typing on a computer; we have three, now that I gave my wife a mini for Christmas. I love cameras. I've got several pairs of jeans, but--this will help--I also occasionally wear bibs. No straw hat though. I wear a beard, sort of, but I don't speak low German.
Those of us who were raised in peculiar cultures have a peculiar problem with "in, but not of" because the dynamics of the peculiar cultures offer such a clearly "set apart" battery of behaviors that it's easy simply to assume that those behaviors--going to church twice, not cutting your grass on the Sabbath, staying home from R-rated movies, sending kids to the Christian school, whatever--constitute something close to the regimen Jesus actually had in mind when speaking to his Jewish disciples. Like the Amish. God bless 'em. I'm honestly not poking fun.
The Amish turned their back on their Mennonites brethren in the 17th century sometime, when they believed their Mennonite neighbors were a'whoring after worldliness and thereby leaving the straight-and-narrow; they'd become too much "of this world," I'm sure, so some of the most devout decided to follow Jesus instead and determined therefore, that there would simply be no more change. Hence, old order Amish.
My wife and I just finished Rhoda Janzen's memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home and found it both delightfully entertaining and engagingly thoughtful, although, strangely enough, a bit more the former than the latter. Often we found ourselves wondering how on earth she could resume relationships with some she calls her friends--or even her family; and while I doubt Rhoda Janzen actually "tells all," she certainly tells enough to offend a ton of those closest to her. But then, that's the genre. She's writing a memoir.
Janzen, who teaches at Hope College, doesn't pull any punches when it comes to herself either, admitting that many of the choices she has made in her life weren't anywhere near to being in her own best interests. The story begins after Nick, her husband of 15 years, leaves her for a man named Bob, a man he met on gay.com. Not long before, she'd been laid up badly by a horrible car accident. In other words, things happened in her life that pushed her into enough of a tail's spin to make her go home to Mom, which is a story in itself--the story of the memoir.
The arc of the book aims at reconciliation--not with Nick, the departed and abusive husband, but with Ms. Janzen's own Mennonite past. Much of the hilarity of the memoir is in her rehearsing the silliness of the old ways, even though her particular tribe of Mennonites is far more progressive than those whose women still don doilies and long black dresses. Much of the madcap humor of the book comes from her recitation of that culture's peculiar "other-worldliness." If you know nothing about the Mennonites, Ms. Janzen's rich memoir will fill you in quickly--and wittily.
But it's the trajectory of the thing that's somewhat disappointing because it seems clear that, to her, the horrors of her life require the sweet therapies of home and her peculiar culture to cure--she says as much. There's a quiet suggestion that, in some important ways, she's come home. But when push comes to shove, I'm not totally convinced.
Ms. Janzen seems to me to be far more gentle in the treatment of the culture she adopted--art openings, dinner parties, New York Times' readers--than she is with the culture of her birthright--the funny people who tote curduroy Bibles. Nick himself, despite the horrors she's experienced, is simply a misguided misfit--brilliant, handsome, educated, philosophical, but tragically bi-polar and therefore not responsible for his vile excesses. It's understanable, but it seems clear that only ex-patriot Mennonites can adequately speak her language--and as long as there is a NY Times Book Review somewhere close. Often, she treats her own people as if they were 20th century descendents of Van Gogh's potato eaters, which, of course, most of them are.
The sticking point in this equation is faith, of course. What creates the cultural baggage of the Mennonite tradition--or any faith tradition, for that matter--is a soul of faith. The question Ms. Janzen's story begs is really whether or not she has the soul to go home, and that question--or so it seems to me--isn't answered in this fascinating, often hilarious and but sometimes tragic memoir. In her head, she can make the necessary accomodations; in her heart, she knows she's coming home to people who love her. The question is soul--does she believe in any way shape or form what they do? For the most part, that's not a question she very openly confronts in this book, despite the often jaw-dropping candor of the memoir.
All of that is no indictment of Ms. Janzen or the memoir. I am--after sixty years--far more trusting of those who don't claim to know exactly how to balance being in the world, but not of it, than I am of those who believe, piously, that all the answers since Job's suffering belong somehow to them, whatever their tradition--Irish Catholic, Dutch Calvinist, Orthodox, or Southern Baptist. Or Mennonite.
Rhoda Janzen's problem, finally, belongs to all people of faith, the Christian faith in particular: what does it mean--exactly--to be in the world, but not of it? And that answer no one really has down, or so it seems to me. Not me, not Rhoda Janzen, and not even the Amish. All of us keep trying, as she does in this entertaining memoir.
The rest of us still have some problems. I drive a car, for instance, even two of them. Is that being too much "of the world?" We eat humus and fry bread and enchilladas--not to mention an occasional North Atlantic cod filet from Culver's. I'm typing on a computer; we have three, now that I gave my wife a mini for Christmas. I love cameras. I've got several pairs of jeans, but--this will help--I also occasionally wear bibs. No straw hat though. I wear a beard, sort of, but I don't speak low German.
Those of us who were raised in peculiar cultures have a peculiar problem with "in, but not of" because the dynamics of the peculiar cultures offer such a clearly "set apart" battery of behaviors that it's easy simply to assume that those behaviors--going to church twice, not cutting your grass on the Sabbath, staying home from R-rated movies, sending kids to the Christian school, whatever--constitute something close to the regimen Jesus actually had in mind when speaking to his Jewish disciples. Like the Amish. God bless 'em. I'm honestly not poking fun.
The Amish turned their back on their Mennonites brethren in the 17th century sometime, when they believed their Mennonite neighbors were a'whoring after worldliness and thereby leaving the straight-and-narrow; they'd become too much "of this world," I'm sure, so some of the most devout decided to follow Jesus instead and determined therefore, that there would simply be no more change. Hence, old order Amish.
My wife and I just finished Rhoda Janzen's memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home and found it both delightfully entertaining and engagingly thoughtful, although, strangely enough, a bit more the former than the latter. Often we found ourselves wondering how on earth she could resume relationships with some she calls her friends--or even her family; and while I doubt Rhoda Janzen actually "tells all," she certainly tells enough to offend a ton of those closest to her. But then, that's the genre. She's writing a memoir.
Janzen, who teaches at Hope College, doesn't pull any punches when it comes to herself either, admitting that many of the choices she has made in her life weren't anywhere near to being in her own best interests. The story begins after Nick, her husband of 15 years, leaves her for a man named Bob, a man he met on gay.com. Not long before, she'd been laid up badly by a horrible car accident. In other words, things happened in her life that pushed her into enough of a tail's spin to make her go home to Mom, which is a story in itself--the story of the memoir.
The arc of the book aims at reconciliation--not with Nick, the departed and abusive husband, but with Ms. Janzen's own Mennonite past. Much of the hilarity of the memoir is in her rehearsing the silliness of the old ways, even though her particular tribe of Mennonites is far more progressive than those whose women still don doilies and long black dresses. Much of the madcap humor of the book comes from her recitation of that culture's peculiar "other-worldliness." If you know nothing about the Mennonites, Ms. Janzen's rich memoir will fill you in quickly--and wittily.
But it's the trajectory of the thing that's somewhat disappointing because it seems clear that, to her, the horrors of her life require the sweet therapies of home and her peculiar culture to cure--she says as much. There's a quiet suggestion that, in some important ways, she's come home. But when push comes to shove, I'm not totally convinced.
Ms. Janzen seems to me to be far more gentle in the treatment of the culture she adopted--art openings, dinner parties, New York Times' readers--than she is with the culture of her birthright--the funny people who tote curduroy Bibles. Nick himself, despite the horrors she's experienced, is simply a misguided misfit--brilliant, handsome, educated, philosophical, but tragically bi-polar and therefore not responsible for his vile excesses. It's understanable, but it seems clear that only ex-patriot Mennonites can adequately speak her language--and as long as there is a NY Times Book Review somewhere close. Often, she treats her own people as if they were 20th century descendents of Van Gogh's potato eaters, which, of course, most of them are.
The sticking point in this equation is faith, of course. What creates the cultural baggage of the Mennonite tradition--or any faith tradition, for that matter--is a soul of faith. The question Ms. Janzen's story begs is really whether or not she has the soul to go home, and that question--or so it seems to me--isn't answered in this fascinating, often hilarious and but sometimes tragic memoir. In her head, she can make the necessary accomodations; in her heart, she knows she's coming home to people who love her. The question is soul--does she believe in any way shape or form what they do? For the most part, that's not a question she very openly confronts in this book, despite the often jaw-dropping candor of the memoir.
All of that is no indictment of Ms. Janzen or the memoir. I am--after sixty years--far more trusting of those who don't claim to know exactly how to balance being in the world, but not of it, than I am of those who believe, piously, that all the answers since Job's suffering belong somehow to them, whatever their tradition--Irish Catholic, Dutch Calvinist, Orthodox, or Southern Baptist. Or Mennonite.
Rhoda Janzen's problem, finally, belongs to all people of faith, the Christian faith in particular: what does it mean--exactly--to be in the world, but not of it? And that answer no one really has down, or so it seems to me. Not me, not Rhoda Janzen, and not even the Amish. All of us keep trying, as she does in this entertaining memoir.
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