Who reads a 500+ page history/biography as recreational reading?
I’m not patting myself on the back, just somewhat amazed how engrossed I’ve been in Harold S. Bender 1897-1962, by Albert N. Keim [Herald Press, 1998] for the past couple months. It took me that long because I sometimes only read 2-3 pages at a time, before going to sleep.
I first picked it up because as an Eastern Mennonite University student in the early 70s, one of our required readings was Bender’s short booklet, The Anabaptist Vision (I still have my first well-marked copy from my student days), which had grabbed me then and formed some of my thinking.
The second reason I picked up the biography of Bender was because it written by one of my favorite professors of all time, the late historian Al Keim. After I took my first course with him, I enrolled in whatever other courses he taught that I could fit in, just because I enjoyed them so much. He was mischievously full of good stories. And he had a daughter named Melody.
Keim begins the difficult job of chronicling Bender’s widespread influence by detailing as much as he could learn of Bender’s childhood home and family, and summarizes Bender’s father, George, as working in “Mennonite publishing and missions.”
Bam. That hit me between the eyes. I have spent my whole career so far, 37 years, working in Mennonite publishing and missions. Maybe this book would somehow connect to my life, I thought. The Bender family lived for awhile at 1711 Prairie Street in Elkhart, Ind., where I and many other Mennonite Voluntary Service orientees passed through (and ate many meals) on our way to service assignments. Later I stayed there when traveling to Elkhart for meetings. So Harold lived in that house while his dad worked as administrator of Mennonite Board of Missions there; there he overheard the beginnings for organizations like Mennonite Central Committee (Keim, p. 75).
I love the way this biography, like an octopus, sends out tentacles to so many aspects of Mennonite and Anabaptist history and links them, especially to the tumultuous first half of the 20th century (considering two world wars and their aftermath) and brings it all together so one can begin to glimpse the powerful ways the Mennonite church and its history were shaped during that time.*
Bender, for instance, was instrumental in setting up, with the U.S. government, the Civilian Public Service program providing conscientious objectors like my father a way to serve their country and God without taking up arms, which they felt went against the teachings of Jesus Christ. CPS was the pivotal experience of my father’s life. It was his college education (as a farm boy, never having gone past grade 8 in school) and his deeper introduction to Mennonite peace theology. He read books and literature and learned from the many speakers and leaders who passed through the camps where he served. Dad, in turn, always tried to teach and share these ideals with his children and grandchildren.
So when H.S. Bender came along and said Mennonites needed to send their kids to Mennonite high schools and colleges in order to insure that subsequent generations were given the opportunity to understand their Anabaptist heritage of suffering and dying for their faith, my pop stood right in line and came up with the money (by selling pigs, if necessary) to send his kids to a Mennonite high school (until we moved from the area).
I could go on, but blogs are brief and this book is not. I’ll try to wrap it up.
Keim critiques Bender in many places, not sidestepping how frenetically busy and involved Bender stayed throughout his life in so many endeavors (to the consternation of peers who frequently told him he was overcommitted, to put it mildly). If you need a reason to want to explore this book, or if you have ever been involved in any of these organizations, his list of assignments or jobs he was doing concurrently was astounding (and most of these institutions still operate today in one form or another; I’ve linked the existing organization, if found):
Dean of Goshen Biblical Seminary
Secretary of MCC Executive Committee
Chair of MCC Peace Section
Chair of Peace Problems Committee
Chair of Historical Committee
Executive Secretary of Bethany Christian High SchoolPresident, Mennonite Historical Society
Editor of Mennonite Quarterly Review
Chair of International Mennonite Peace Committee
President Mennonite World Conference
Editor of The Mennonite Encyclopedia
(And three other posts which have less general meaning or modern counterparts.)
Exhausted anyone? Was he power hungry? Maybe power-driven by personality, but humbleness kept him in line. Keim touches on those questions, not skirting comments by those who felt Bender overreached at times.
But mostly it was a different time, a smaller Mennonite world, when it often made sense to have one man (yes, his world was mostly male church leaders) wearing multiple hats because if you were sailing to Europe to do business, you might as plan the next Mennonite World Conference, consult on the encyclopedia project, work on establishing European headquarters for MCC etc. etc. AND be indulging in collecting obscure Anabaptist history books because that was one of your few hobbies/passions (even whisking them away from European scholars who also coveted them). And oh yes, there’s this pesky World War II thing breaking out so gotta worry about Hitler and visas and getting in and out of countries.
I didn’t know Bender led such an amazing life. Bender was a mentor to people like the brilliant young scholar John Howard Yoder, who would write The Politics of Jesus and many many other volumes and become a name known worldwide in peace theology circles. Eventually Bender, as generations changed, found himself defending a certain amount of orthodoxy, which he resisted as a younger man. But he was skilled in mediating and finding harmony among diverse thinkers and across generations.
In his epilogue, Keim notes that Peter Dyck, another giant of that era, noted that each evening when they traveled together Bender, without fail, would read a passage of scripture and kneel at his bedside for audible prayer. “Perhaps no ritual among Mennonites was more pervasive than the one Peter Dyck observed,” wrote Keim.
I can still see my Dad doing the same thing beside his bed if I happened to sneak in late and pass his open door. A strong precious memory.
I’m sorry I missed the book when it first came out, but historical biography never gets old. Plus it probably means more to me now after nearly 15 years of curating Mennonite information for the public at Third Way Café.
Call me a Menno-nerd. A Presbyterian-Anabaptist-Mennonite nerd. Or something.
***
*The book, because it primarily spans the time period of Bender’s life from 1897 to 1962 does not mention the exciting current era of how the Mennonite/Anabaptist world has changed and shifted to where today there are many more Mennonites south of the equator than north of it, many more Mennonites a color other than pasty beige. You could say Stuart Murray’s The Naked Anabaptist takes up The Anabaptist Vision today.
How do you decide? Do you put her away when she starts having too many accidents? When she can hardly get up and down the two steps going from your garage to your house? When she seems to have labored breathing? When she can hardly get up from the wood floor as her legs slide from under her? When she groans about 30 percent of the time you are around her? When she does this weird hacking thing like she was going to throw up but doesn’t even dry heave, just makes an awful noise? When you think about planning a vacation (or even just overnight) but feel you can’t leave her, not even with good pet care available? (The last time we went away she had a hard time and thanked us with some terrible messes when we came back.)
Fable, (named by our oldest daughter for one of Queen Elizabeth’s famed Corgis) still seems to enjoy life, most of the time, but there are times when she looks at you with that look of help me, I know I’m not the dog I used to be … can’t you do anything?
Our German Shepherd/collie mix, in her day a beautiful dog that any dog lover praised and commented on, is now 12 and a half years old, which is about 63 in human years, (not using the old formula of seven dog years for every human year, but using newer charts/calculators which factor in dogs reaching adulthood within their first couple years). About two years ago Fable got her first tumor, which the vet felt was cancerous, and eventually we had him remove it after struggling with indecision for months because our approach to paying for medical care for pets is we provide the minimal amount, feeling like for us it is unethical to overspend (ten thousands of dollars, like some do) on medical care and also unfair to the animal because they simply do not understand why they are being put through excessive interventions. We finally found a vet who quoted a price several hundred dollars lower than the vet we had been seeing. So we decided to go through one cancer removal operation, but not do any radiation or whatever they do for post cancer follow up on animals. While I worried about her healing (would she ever stop trying to lick the wound?) we lucked out and she recovered well. She had about nine good months.
Then a lump returned, but it looked different, and we decided to just see what would happen with it. It may have been just a cyst. Eventually it oozed and bled, but after a few days of wondering whether it was time to put her down, and cleaning up a few messes, she seemed to get it under control and after about two months of almost constantly licking it, it went away. Not kidding. It is totally healed. We didn’t consult the vet, knowing her months were numbered anyway. I said if I believed in praying for pet health, I would have said it was a miracle.
Now Fable is just doing all of the things I mentioned in the first paragraph. She has a good day one day, and the next day seems worse.
The dilemma and emotional toil can be difficult but nothing like you would face if you felt euthanasia or assisted suicide were an option for a loved but suffering human being.
We have walked closely alongside of several families or couples where a family member was dying of cancer. We listened as Durwood, in anguish the last week of his wife’s life, asked us to pray that Betty could go. He was up and down all night with her. Toileting, choking, swallowing—all these became daily and ongoing difficult issues. Hospice care helps, but only so much. Morphine helps, but only so much. Dry mouths, tissue-thin skin, rail thin/skeletal bodies, all of it so sad. Agitation and not being able to ever get comfortable. Those who walk alongside anyone dying of cancer go through a nightmare of care. I don’t know how/what I would do in that situation.
But yet, I cannot imagine making a decision to put someone out of their misery, even if you felt it was the humane thing to do. That’s why I mostly think it is better to not even have it as an option. It is taken off the table of choices. Someone much more experienced in this field than my poor knowledge is Dr. Ira Byock, author of Dying Well. I pre-interviewed him by phone and our producers at Mennonite Media have filmed two video interviews about his experiences and research in this area for two documentaries we did, including one on “Embracing Aging.” (See a clip here.)
But back to the dog. We have had to put down two cats and one dog. (Our other pets all succumbed of natural causes or from accidents on the road.) Eventually we did do the hard thing for those who needed to be helped in their misery and took them to the vet and lovingly, while by their sides, had the shots administered that finally helped them stop breathing (it took more than one for our first dog, Wendy). But even then, the days before and while driving to the vet, we pondered, are we wimping out? Is this for our convenience, or the comfort of the beloved pet? Is it the right thing? Eventually you just power through, never really knowing.
I have to think it would be the same excruciating question with a human, only much much much more so. (I hope you get that I’m not equating a person’s suffering with a pet’s.) I assume assisted suicide would only be at the loved one’s request, but so many people hate being a bother, hate putting their loved ones through all that difficult end stage care, (in addition to wanting to avoid suffering themselves), that I’m sure some people would request euthanasia more out of love and care for their caretakers than for themselves alone.
I wrote most of this post yesterday and pondered/rewrote some of it. Then my dear beloved Fable, for whom my Twitter handle is named (FableMom), died this morning, at home. She made the decision for us, or rather her body did. R.I.P., dear dog.
What do you think? Have you put a pet down? How did you know?
If you are a woman or girl (or anyone) who has ever loved a dog, you might love this.
Video of Fable playing her favorite game in better times.
“Grandmother … did not even dream that the day would come when one could go to a store and buy noodles.”
I’m on a hunt, and for a reason.
Last fall after a book signing at Das Essen Haus Restaurant in Middlebury, Indiana (where they have fantastic Amish noodles, by the way, a special love in the family I grew up in), the director of the Road Scholar program (used to be Elder Hostel, wonder why they changed the name ha ha) at Camp Amigo (Sturgis, Mich.) contacted me about coming to Camp Amigo’s Road Scholar week September 2013 dealing with Mennonite and Amish history, beliefs and customs. (I’ll share specific details here when info on this year’s program is posted.)
Mandy Yoder, adult program director, wanted me to talk about Mennonite cooking, traditions, cookbooks etc. (see my Sept. 2012 column series on Mennonite Cookbooks here). She also invited me to talk about my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner: Recipes and Reflections on Keeping Family Dinner and to help the participants make homemade noodles, thinking it would be a cooking project the participants could take home with them and not worry about spoilage etc.
That sounded great and exciting and fun, except for one biggish problem. I had never made noodles. I never even especially had a desire to make noodles when they’re so cheap and easy from a bag. So I ‘fessed up and Mandy offered to have a real Amish cook come and make noodles for the group. Which sounds great!
Yet I want to learn to make them ahead of time; I love the idea of knowing how to make more and more things from a few simple ingredients—not having to run to town if you are out of something.
So over Christmas vacation with my youngest daughter at home, we made a small batch using this recipe (Ready Nutrition website) from The Best of Amish Cooking by Phyllis Pellman Good. I cut the recipe in half since I wanted to experiment:
3 egg yolks
3 TB water
1 ½ c. flour
¼ t. salt
Beat egg yolks and water thoroughly. Stir in salt and flour. Knead together. Form 2 balls, Roll out. Dough will be very stiff.
It is kind of like mixing up bread or pie dough, until you get to the rolling out part.
It was very very hard to roll out.
Oh, and don’t plan to make these and use them for a quick lunch or something. Of course they have to dry. At least a day, maybe more, depending on how thick or thin they are.
I did finally use them for a homemade lunch about a week later, using the things I had on hand, and That felt good: some cooked turkey and a little broth frozen after Thanksgiving, some water (since I didn’t have any other broth in the pantry or freezer, yikes); a stalk or two of celery, chopped; 2 Tablespoons chopped onion, and these spices (oops, the cumin name doesn’t show up on the maroon bottle):
And it tasted good. Maybe a pinch too much salt, but tasty. The noodles were plenty thick and took a longer time to cook through, about a half hour. My daughter (who had went back home) asked “Did the noodles fall apart?” I had wondered too if flour, eggs, water, and salt wouldn’t just go all gooey and mushy, but they hung together fine. So they felt very substantial and warming on a cold January day.
***
When I told my mother I made homemade noodles she surprised me by saying with a gush of pleasure: “I can see my mother now stringing out noodles to dry over her ironing board!” The thought filled her with memories and I encouraged her to write them down for me … which I hope to share here. I didn’t know my grandmother made noodles. But I guess pretty much everyone did if they wanted them. Mary Emma Showalter said in Mennonite Community Cookbook, (the grandmother of most modern Mennonite cookbooks), “Grandmother … did not even dream that the day would come when one could go to a store and buy noodles.”
Next time I will add about 1 teaspoon of shortening as in the recipe in Mennonite Community Cookbook, to add a little richness (Grandma would have used lard, but I’ll probably use Crisco).
***
Making some homemade noodle soup soon (use whatever noodles you have in your pantry: linguine, spaghetti, etc.) might feel good for those suffering from the creeping crud & flu that is so widespread. Be well!
I don’t have an answer to that question but thought I’d share images and stories from our own small nativity collection.
Our first nativity set was given by my dear former neighbor and still great friend, Barbara, who was into ceramics at the time. When we were expecting our oldest daughter, Barbara gave us a complete ceramic nativity set, unpainted. She said now that we were going to be parents, we needed a nativity set. Yes! It became one of our daughters’ favorite Advent activities, getting out the figurines on each new day of Advent, and yes, sometimes fighting over who got the half naked shepherd boy. We waited to put Baby Jesus in the manger until Christmas morning, and the wise men & their camels & gifts arrived sometime between Dec. 26 and Jan. 6. So I painted this set while I was “great with child and pondering these things in my heart.”
My second most favorite set consists of tiny clay figurines purchased during the Christmas markets in December in Barcelona (Spain, where I spent my junior year of college, detailed in this book). I purchased the tiniest version I could find (thinking of how I would pack them for home) and gave the set to my parents who kept it for about 30 years, and they passed it back to me when they moved to a retirement home.
Our third complete nativity is a plastic one I bought so the kids would have a set they could play with to their hearts content (every home needs one that is playable). I first gave it to them when my husband and I were going to one of several Christmas parties one year and we had hired a babysitter (rare event) and the kids got to open it and play with it while we were gone. Somehow one of the wise guy’s presents did indeed became detached from his arms–which was OK, it was for the kids to have and play with! The box of gold is here balanced delicately in his hands (reminder to hang onto our gold lightly??)
My heart still squeezes with tenderness to tell the story of this tiny nativity purchased as an ornament by my youngest daughter when she spent a week at the wonderful Presbyterian Montreat Music & Worship conference, from the Ten Thousand Village store there. It was pricey, probably around $8.95, which is all she had to spend on gifts that week. She bought it and gave it to me, foregoing any gifts for herself. You can bet who will get that ornament back when I move to a retirement home!
Some nativities are so cheap and plastic that you just gotta love ’em. I still have the tiny box this one came in. I think one of the kids got it from a blessed Sunday school teacher. Do you have one like this in your past?
Finally, and this bears a P-rating alert (poopy), my dad’s favorite figurine from the Barcelona purchase described above.
From About.com on Spain Travel we learn this: “Caganer is a little porcelain gnome-like figure with his trousers down, defecating somewhere in the nativity scene. Children enjoy looking for the little guy, who is often hidden among the more traditional items. Surprisingly not invented by the post-South Park generation – Caganer has been offering his unique presents to the nativity scene since at least the middle of the 18th or 19th century, depending on who you believe, although in recent years the Catalan government has banned him from official displays.” See another picture of the Caganer.
***
While much mystery still surrounds what the wise people from the east actually looked like, and most scenes and artwork include a multicultural mix, the fact that travelers came from afar to see the young child is still pretty amazing over 2000 years later.
A blessed Epiphany: may we still seek him.
Our lay leader on Sunday, Nancy Hopkins-Garriss, reminded us that while the hubbub of Christmas was over for the rest of the world, as Christians, after Christmas, we could celebrate in a more low key fashion and enjoy the 12 days of Christmas stretching to Epiphany (January 6). Take walks. Sit by the tree. Not worry about company coming. Not worry about who we had to buy for yet. No more cookies to bake, just cookies to share and get rid of. This week has been like that for me.
Funny thing at my house: I’m happy and relieved to go back to “work” at the office (which I did today) because I can get away from fixing meals (or at least putting food out) three times a day.
I just learned of an old Irish tradition called “Women’s Christmas” which occurred on Epiphany—women were given a break from their normal domestic chores and especially the work of Christmas, and encouraged to go off and celebrate together. That sounds like a great tradition to revive. Jan. L Richardson, an artist and inspirational writer/speaker, also wrote about this tradition last year in her blog.
Our church has long had another tradition of having Epiphany dinners in homes—with each visitor bringing a dish. People who want to participate either sign up to be hosts or guests, and someone fixes up the guest list and lets the hosts know who will be coming to their house. The host then contacts each guest to find out what dish they want to bring. It tends to be a favorite tradition because the work is nil: just brushing crumbs off the Christmas table cloth.
The year I lived in Spain, I was delighted to learn about celebrating “Three Kings Day” on January 6. Children left cognac and good Spanish bread for the Kings who left gifts in their shoes by the fireplace. Beats milk and cookies for tired Santas. But I don’t recommend gift giving for Epiphany AND Christmas day … nor could I ever gather energy or funds to give little gifts as some do for each of the 12 days of Christmas. Enough already.
Back to more chilling. I’m sure God didn’t mean for the birth of the Christ child to mean more domestic work for us all. Allowing space to breath, exercise, sleep in, and stay up late helps restore inner harmony after the rush of December. Which means eating just a simple bowl of cereal, blueberries and English walnuts for breakfast. Yum.
(I’m also indebted to Malinda Elizabeth Berry, this week’s writer in Rejoice! devotional, writing about “Women’s Christmas.”)
Most of us love the fresh feel of a new year, the smell of a new book, the welcome of a new notebook that is unspoiled with bad handwriting.
I have thought about starting a blog for over a year and many times I’ve thought, I really don’t need another thing to write, another “have to” in the back of my mind, another thing to keep my cramped arm typing on the computer.
And yet there have been many times I’ve thought, ah, now if I had a blog, I would write about that. And see if anyone cared. And writer/authors these days are supposed to have something called an “author platform,” a place to connect with audiences and to keep them from their latest book or other project. So here goes.
I aim to post once or twice a week, and share things from my kitchen (or from others) about that often, learning as I go. Like I’ve got some tweaks to make to these pages but have patience.
For now, here is a recipe marrying some down home Virginia cooking with fine cuisine–a harmony of sorts. At first glance, you might think: sausage gravy? On pancakes? How starchy and calorie and fat laden is that? I never tasted sausage gravy until my husband joined the Lions and I watched Lion John Knepper in Broadway make this in endless supply for the Lions annual pancake days. I like to think of this as a fine French sauce on thickish crepes! Here is a modification of his recipe, just enough for the two of us.
Sausage Gravy
1/3 lb. Gunnoes whole hog sausage, mild (or the highest quality favorite sausage you can buy)
1 Tb. shortening – Crisco as needed, or fat remaining from frying sausage
1/3 c. regular flour
1-1/2 c. water
1/4. tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
Saute sausage in fry pan, chopping in to medium fine crumbs as it cooks. Remove cooked sausage. Brown 2 Tb. of the flour in the remaining grease, or if there isn’t much grease left in pan use 1 Tb. of Crisco. While the flour is browning, make a white sauce by putting the remaining flour into a plastic shaker thing (like an old Cool Whip container), and adding the water (cold). Shake til the flour is dissolved and smooth. When the flour in the pan is brown and hot, add the white sauce mixture to the pan. Stir and press out lumps if they occur. Add salt and pepper. Keep stirring until it bubbles up and thickens. If you want a thin gravy, add more water or even milk if you want. Cook for at least several minutes to let flavor seep through. You can make your pancakes while that simmers. Serve hot on top of fresh pancakes, crepes, biscuits, toast–whatever you want. Let me know what you think!
findingharmonyblog 