There’s Demons in the Desert

I saw a brief article in the recent Anabaptist World about Mennonite colonies in Bolivia. Quoting John Bueckert of Providencia, “Our ancestors thought that if we were far away, in the countryside, there’s more possibility of controlling evil. We want to live like they did.”

Going out into the wilderness or the desert to escape the evils of the world seems reasonable on the face of it. Escaping and avoiding the things that destroy you is good self-preservation. Moving further to more remote places to escape the challenges of the world is a familiar Mennonite story.

Mennonites are not alone is in seeking escape from the world in the wilderness. There are many other examples of people heading out into the desert or wilderness for religious reasons. Their wilderness destination, however, was seldom a place to escape evil.

The desert fathers and mothers of early monasticism went out into the desert alone, only to be assaulted relentlessly by demons. For them, escaping into the desert was not a way to avoid evil, but to confront evil more intimately and severely. The stories of the desert father and mothers are filled with tales of battles with demons in the forms of people, animals and thoughts. It was in the desert that Jesus clashed with the devil who was luring him with fame and fortune.

The demons of the world – consumerism, vanity, vulgarity – are weak compared to the demons that assault from within – anger, lust, avarice, and despondency.  

While I know very little of the history and experience of the Mennonite colonies in south and central America, stories of people in these colonies losing the battle against their own demons are not hard to find. Bueckert’s idea that there is more possibility of controlling evil in the wilderness seems to lack much evidence to support this wishful cause.

Manitoba Mennonites, Is it time for a retreat?

Marlene Kropf recently wrote to Mennonite Church USA members “Is it time for a retreat?” My response is a resounding yes! Until recently I lived in Michigan I could answer that response by visiting a variety of places like Pathways Retreat in Goshen, Indiana, or within a few miles of each other near Three Rivers, Michigan I had the choice of St. Gregory’s Abbey, Apple Farm retreat center, GilChrist retreat center, and The Hermitage  (a retreat center with Mennonite roots that I have been deeply connected to for more than 20 years.) This list does not include the many Catholic and independent retreat places all within a 90 minute drive from home. I didn’t realize the abundant gift of this area until I left.

Late last summer June and I moved to southern Manitoba, and now any attempt to heed the call “Is it time for a retreat?” appears to be much, much more difficult. When I’ve ask others, the most common answer is, “I knew some people used to go to X, but they closed.” I know the Mennonite camp is interested in being a place for congregational spirituality, but rows of camp bunkbeds and large noisy dining halls are not conducive to silence and solitude.

So, Manitoba Mennonites, Is it time for a retreat (center)? This question is not exclusively directed at Mennonites, as I know the desire for a space for retreat extends through many expressions of the Christian faith.

I’ll put my cards on the table. The ministry of operating a quiet space for prayer and contemplation has been the most fulfilling work I’ve done over these past 20 years as volunteer, board member/chair, staff, and director at The Hermitage. I have seen first-hand, over and over again what a valuable service this is for people. I have seen so many people arrive to their retreat in anguish and leave with a sense of rest and their own belovedness. I have been intimately involved with the nitty gritty of fund-raising, financial compliance, facility maintenance, managing staff and volunteers, and doing endless loads of laundry and the relentless need to prepare another meal. I have few romantic notions of operating a retreat center. I often told people that the work of running a retreat center is “work”. And this work is the fullest expression of my spiritual life.

And so, I want to do whatever I can to work with others to discern the needs and possibilities for there to be a space for retreat available for all who need and desire it. I have little idea what that process might look like, but I don’t feel like I have a lot of time (or patience) to endlessly dream.

I am going to spend the next few months trying to make connections and find people for whom the dream of a place for contemplative retreat resonates with their souls. I would love to gather a group in early summer to discuss and imagine together. It is my hope that any gatherings not simply be times of pondering, but that these times lead to some actionable next steps. This needs to be a community supported project and I’m very aware of the audacity for me to say, “I need to do this and I want you to come alongside to help make it happen because you want it too” but that’s where I’m at.

So, if you find any resonance with this idea, or if you know someone who might, please contact me either via my contact page, or at ksdriedger@gmail.com

In Praise of the Useless Mennonite*

I have a compulsion to be useful. Growing up I absorbed/adopted the idea that usefulness was next to godliness. Or perhaps usefulness was godliness. I think I’m really good at being useful. I wish I wasn’t.

Christian usefulness is an important value and characteristic of north American white Mennonites. But I wonder when our emphasis on usefulness as a personal religious value is really just an expression of extractive capitalism. Just as a land’s value is based on how much economic worth we can get out of it, a useful person’s value is dependent on how many service hours they can provide. How much hardworking good can a person do to achieve greater good for all. Any evening spent tying comforters for MCC is more useful and of greater value than an evening reading a novel or playing with Lego®.

I think usefulness is a distraction from our true work.

I want to sing the praises of the useless Mennonite. The useless Mennonite shifts the location of their value. The useless Mennonite detaches their value from their accomplishments, or the good they achieved. The useless Mennonite rests in God.

Some of the greatest Christian activities are prayer and worship. This is not prayer for the purpose of negotiating some transaction with God. Not prayer to cajole God to accomplish something, no matter how good.  And this is not worship for the purpose of being a pre-cursor to fellowship hour. But rather, useless prayer and worship is simply recognizing one’s presence with God’s presence. In useless prayer and worship the only transaction is God freely loves you and you freely love God.

We are all familiar with the two greatest commandments: to Love God with all our heart and mind and soul, and to love others as ourselves. How often do we Mennonite skip over the loving God part and get to the loving others part? Do Mennonites have conferences, working groups, and retreats to reflect on loving God? We may have, but I’m not certain. But Mennonites do have conferences and working groups to think and meet about loving others. This Mennonite understanding of loving others is best expressed by serving others for the cause of justice.

Service itself is not a bad thing, but I think the motivation for service can reshape service from useful to useless. I’ve been pondering service as a sacramental activity; service as an act of worship. The purpose and practice of sacramental service is to open ourselves to bear witness to God’s presence in the other and to then love and worship God through your interaction with that person. The purpose of sacramental service is not to achieve great social change, but to love God. Brother Lawrence’s mode of life was to do everything, even flip an omelet in his frying pan, for the love of God.

Being a useless Mennonite does not mean not getting anything done, it means not doing something primarily to accomplish something, but first to do that thing for the love of God.

I used to work at the Hermitage, a contemplative retreat center that offered space for silence, solitude, and rest. During my time there I began to realize that rest was one of the greatest gifts for a person to receive on retreat. Too often I had people arrive with stacks of books to read and an agenda of all that they wanted to accomplish. A I welcomed them I would often encourage them to start first with a nap. The useless practice of rest and silence creates space within ourselves to hear God. And what could be more valuable than that? We do not accomplish God’s presence. We do not achieve a listening heart. We let go of all our useful activities and allow God’s presence to fill us.

The goal of the useless Mennonite is to detach themselves from their striving, serving, and accomplishing. The useless Mennonite may still be active in serving, and accomplishing great things, but that is not their goal. Their goal is simply to love and worship God in all they do. The useless Mennonite lives out the moniker “the quiet in the land” not by holding the world at a distance, but in resting with reverence and awe in the loving presence of God.

* My use of Mennonite in this piece is referring to north American, white Mennonites. And my use of Mennonite includes poorly informed, over-generalizations for my own convenience.

If you are my light, then shine on me.

I recently read Prayer Book for Earnest Christians: A Spiritually Rich Anabaptist Resource. It is a recent English translation of Die ernsthafte Christepflicht which was initially published in the early 1700s. It’s a fascinating insight into how at least some Anabaptists prayed. The language of the prayers feels more familiar to texts by earlier Catholic writers than any of my own Mennonite context.

Below is a portion of one of the prayers that I particularly liked.

Discipleship and Prayer: Following Jesus up the mountain

The concept of discipleship has been central to Anabaptist teach from its beginnings. For most of this history discipleship was spoken of as nachfolge German for to follow. Anabaptists emphasized Christ’s call to “follow him” and that following Christ should shape our lives and faith. This discipleship seemed to have largely ethical ramifications. Discussing ethics is the Anabaptist “happy place”. Following Jesus shaped how one was to relate to others with non-resistance/pacifism/non-violence being central to all relationships. (Unfortunately, we have seen that non-violence in relationships with women was not seen as important by some who emphasized discipleship.)

This approach to discipleship as shaping ethics is fine, but it is incomplete. Jesus life and ministry was not just about ethics. One place I can’t recall ever being taught to follow Jesus was up the mountain to pray. I’ve recently been rereading the gospels and have once again been struck by how often Jesus went away to be alone to pray. Mennonites have traditionally loved to follow Jesus into communities and crowds, but following Jesus into solitude up the mountain, or into the desert has not been seen as important part of discipleship.

It seems that one of the dangers of ethics being the central vision for discipleship is it quickly valorizes activity and effectiveness. Doing something is always better that doing “nothing” and quiet, prayerful solitude looks way too much like doing nothing. But this understanding is not faithful to following the Jesus of the Bible who yes, was very active and effective, but also repeatedly and regularly went up the mountain to pray, and regularly invited his disciples to follow him in this practice.

Stepping away from our good works to pray is necessary to place ourselves and our work in context of a fuller awareness of God’s presence in this world, and our humble and dependent reliance on God. Too often our work is a distraction from simply listening and being aware of God. Without this awareness our good works simply become our good works. Spending significant time going apart to pray helps our good work become God’s good work.

I could write a lot more about this than the little bit of meandering typing on this chilly Saturday morning. Image is from Maumeen pass in Ireland.

Mennonite Seeds of Contemplation

I recently had two wonderful conversations with John Rempel, a Mennonite scholar and former pastor. He was on retreat at the Hermitage therefore was a captive audience when I first begged a bit of his time for a conversation. What I wanted to talk with him and hear from him was about the state of Mennonite spirituality today, and if there was a place for contemplative spirituality within contemporary Mennonite spirituality. It was an engaging conversation. On his last day of retreat, he requested a follow-up conversation.

One of the primary take-aways for me from these conversations is the conviction that there are seeds of contemplative spirituality within, or indigenous to Mennonite spirituality. This conviction leads to the questions of are how are these seeds nurtured, and who is nurturing them?

We noticed that one of these seeds that had been nurtured was a movement towards a broadening and deepening of expression of Mennonite spirituality in the late 20th century.  At the center of that movement was Marcus Smucker and Marlene Kropf at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary; then Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary(ies). These two, with institutional support, created a strong academic and pastoral base to think more deeply about spiritual practices and study within the larger Mennonite church. When both of these people retired, the momentum they created was not taken up by any institution. Without an institutional home the movement waned. This is a loss, arguably a tragic loss. Perhaps, this is also an opportunity.

One of the other seeds of contemplative Mennonite spirituality that was nurtured during this late 20th century was the Hermitage – the retreat center I now direct in southern Michigan. The Hermitage was formed by Gene and Mary Herr and a community of supporters. The Herrs had been deeply formed by and involved with the Mennonite Church and while not officially supported by the denomination, the Hermitage was seen as a Mennonite center exploring contemplative spirituality. While we are still exploring contemplative spirituality, the Mennonite-ness of this place has also waned. While this may be the natural ebb and flow of systems, it too is a loss.

I know my awareness of broader contemporary Mennonite spirituality is limited but I think the loss of an institutional home, or center for contemporary Mennonite spirituality is a critical loss. I know there are a lot of Mennonite individuals and churches interested in and engaging in contemplative spirituality, but without collaborative discussion and institutional support, it will likely remain as scattered little cells.

I will have more conversations with others about Mennonite seeds of contemplation. I hope these will uncover new seeds and new understandings of a contemplative Mennonite spirituality.

Contemplation: a Mennonite Perspective

I am Mennonite and I am contemplative. I co-direct The Hermitage, a contemplative retreat center with Mennonite ties. I know of many others who consider themselves both Mennonite and contemplative and I am sure there are many others I don’t know of.

What I am not sure of, however, is what the Mennonite contemplative conversation sounds like. I am not aware of much public discourse on what it looks like to be a contemplative Mennonite. I don’t exactly know how being Mennonite impacts being contemplative. But, surely it must.

Christian contemplative spirituality has many traditions. I’d be hard pressed to identify a Mennonite contemplative spirituality tradition. What are the practices of a contemplative Mennonite?

And so, I’d like to delve deeper and listen to this conversation. I’m less interested in proposing what contemplative Mennonite spirituality could look like, than I am in discovering what it already looks like. I’m also less interested in what historians have to say with so many words about early Anabaptist spirituality than I am in seeing how these themes are finding contemplative expression amongst Mennonites today.

Some of this little quest for understanding begins with myself, and with The Hermitage which has welcomed and formed many contemplative Mennonites. Some of this quest will likely involve hearing the reflections of others on their own contemplative Mennonite spirituality.

This has the potential to be a large quest, and I’m cautious about how far or fast I can go.  The way is made by walking, so I guess I should put on some shoes.

*FYI - the image at the top is an altered image of the current “Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective”