Read Online Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Memoir) (2010) by Rhoda Janzen - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rhoda Janzen
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pail with the state capitals. Yet it wasn't just geographic knowledge that my parents wanted us to have; it was knowledge of the international scene. In an ironic twist, two of the most conservative Mennonite parents took a sharp stand against monologism. An Americentric worldview, they believed, was incompatible with Christian values on the grounds that God loved all nations equally. My folks insisted that we study and travel abroad. They have done extensive globetrotting on every continent except Antarctica, which is probably on their list. They even know and love the Chaco. Considering that both my grandmothers had a third-grade education and never left the village until they emigrated to rural Ontario, it's funny to get postcards from Kinshasa, or Istanbul, or Hyderabad, from a mom like mine: "We saw a spider big as a teapot! Dad doesn't like yoghurt. There are unattended cows walking down the street. Love, Mom." From Calcutta: "They cremate their dead here by burning old rubber tires. I guess they are out of wood. It stinks to high heaven. Love, Mom."
I thought of my parents' fearlessness as we pulled into the parking lot of a Denny's. After a five-hundred-mile day, we had two more hours to drive to Bend. It felt good to stretch our legs under the restaurant table. And I must say that it felt good to be checked out by a couple of guys sitting right across from us. They were maybe half my age, but they were cute.
The server, who had already deposited my father's patty melt and my mother's breaded chicken cutlet, approached with my salad just as my father began to pray-out loud, in a clear audible voice, thanking God for the patty melt, the cutlet, the salad. Then he prayed for his pastor, for the state governor, for the president. He prayed for the couple who had just adopted three siblings, and for the people of Iraq. He prayed for traveling mercies. In his sober voice he noted that we would embrace whatever circumstances God saw fit to bestow, and he petitioned God for the grace and the wisdom to learn the lessons that our journey had to teach.
I prayed to Pharaoh until I was six. Having learned in Sunday school that the Egyptians worshipped their kings as gods, I wanted to hedge my bets. But I always respectfully addressed the sovereign Yahweh before I spoke to Pharaoh-I thought there was one Pharaoh, mighty and eternal-because the Ten Commandments specified, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The Mennonite God thus received my A-list requests, such as intercession from wolves, disembodied red eyes, vampires, and volcanoes. Pharaoh received my secondary and tertiary requests, like my earnest plea to be spared raisins and the Chaco.
It had been at least thirty years since I'd believed in the power of prayer as anything other than a way to practice gratitude and ameliorate self-pity. Curiously, although I married an atheist, and although I had spent sixteen years pursuing the very secular path of higher education, I had not rejected the idea of God. But during that time my faith had changed dramatically as I had learned more about context of the church and more about religious belief outside Christianity. A little knowledge goes a long way!
The Mennonites have a prickly history with the idea of education. There's an old Low German proverb that I have always savored, in part because everything is funnier somehow in Low German, in part because it seems personally directed at me: Ji jileada, ji vikjeada (the more educated a person is, the more warped). That knowledge would compromise faith is one of those delightfully old-fashioned beliefs that makes us chuckle today, as when we learn that the uterus was once thought to drift about the body, occasionally lodging in neck or elbow. Mennonites often connect their mistrust of education to the passage in the gospel of Mark in which Jesus observes that it is hard for those who trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God. The Mennonite idea is that people who
I thought of my parents' fearlessness as we pulled into the parking lot of a Denny's. After a five-hundred-mile day, we had two more hours to drive to Bend. It felt good to stretch our legs under the restaurant table. And I must say that it felt good to be checked out by a couple of guys sitting right across from us. They were maybe half my age, but they were cute.
The server, who had already deposited my father's patty melt and my mother's breaded chicken cutlet, approached with my salad just as my father began to pray-out loud, in a clear audible voice, thanking God for the patty melt, the cutlet, the salad. Then he prayed for his pastor, for the state governor, for the president. He prayed for the couple who had just adopted three siblings, and for the people of Iraq. He prayed for traveling mercies. In his sober voice he noted that we would embrace whatever circumstances God saw fit to bestow, and he petitioned God for the grace and the wisdom to learn the lessons that our journey had to teach.
I prayed to Pharaoh until I was six. Having learned in Sunday school that the Egyptians worshipped their kings as gods, I wanted to hedge my bets. But I always respectfully addressed the sovereign Yahweh before I spoke to Pharaoh-I thought there was one Pharaoh, mighty and eternal-because the Ten Commandments specified, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The Mennonite God thus received my A-list requests, such as intercession from wolves, disembodied red eyes, vampires, and volcanoes. Pharaoh received my secondary and tertiary requests, like my earnest plea to be spared raisins and the Chaco.
It had been at least thirty years since I'd believed in the power of prayer as anything other than a way to practice gratitude and ameliorate self-pity. Curiously, although I married an atheist, and although I had spent sixteen years pursuing the very secular path of higher education, I had not rejected the idea of God. But during that time my faith had changed dramatically as I had learned more about context of the church and more about religious belief outside Christianity. A little knowledge goes a long way!
The Mennonites have a prickly history with the idea of education. There's an old Low German proverb that I have always savored, in part because everything is funnier somehow in Low German, in part because it seems personally directed at me: Ji jileada, ji vikjeada (the more educated a person is, the more warped). That knowledge would compromise faith is one of those delightfully old-fashioned beliefs that makes us chuckle today, as when we learn that the uterus was once thought to drift about the body, occasionally lodging in neck or elbow. Mennonites often connect their mistrust of education to the passage in the gospel of Mark in which Jesus observes that it is hard for those who trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God. The Mennonite idea is that people who
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