A week before my departure to Washington, D.C., for a year of service with Mennonite Mission Network, a late-night conversation in Chicago with a friend’s roommate won me this response: “So you’re going to hang out with a bunch of Amish people?”
Well … no. Not exactly.
Here’s what I really did: Moved into a big, ancient house in Columbia Heights with four other young people. We share meals, space, and general community as we work for different justice-oriented organizations and nonprofits across the city. We split groceries and deal with the city mice already sharing our tortillas. The same house has been used for the program since the 1980s, and the history is palpable, evident in the quotes from former inhabitants littering the walls, the scads of furniture and bicycles and books left behind. It’s going to be grand.
The new digs in Colombia Heights.
But the comment from my friend’s roommate stuck with me, even as I sorted boxes and navigated the Metro for the first time. It has been my experience that if you are not from Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Iowa or Virginia, or if you watch Breaking Amish, you probably have some slight misunderstandings as to what a Mennonite is.
This disconnect first came to my attention when I attended a writers’ conference at Indiana University four years ago. Hundreds of us gathered to watch the film Silent Light, which follows a family of Old Order Mennonites in Mexico, and upon its finish, a famous playwright leading the discussion asked if there were any Mennonites in the room.
I was the only one who stood up, looking very little the part of what we had just seen on screen with my summer tank top and cut-off shorts. After I tried to explain to the crowd that there were several different branches of Mennonites, some more conservative, the majority assimilated into what might be loosely defined as modern culture, the woman sitting next to me whispered, “So do you have electricity?”
Pretty windows at the Basilica.
As I explained then, and again last week, Mennonite is not the same thing as Amish. The religions may have started in the same Anabaptist vein, but there was a split hundreds of years ago. The difference is in the core of everyday living; where the Amish believe in a separation from the rest of the world, a practice of living in extreme simplicity, Mennonites live out daily life much like everyone else.
I grew up in a place where I took for granted the fact that I could be Mennonite and those around me knew what that meant, church-affiliated or not. I have traveled much and lived in other parts of the world, so it is not that I am shocked by this unfamiliarity with my chosen faith. But graduating and moving away made me realize I wanted to figure out an answer for those who might ask, what the heck is Mennonite Voluntary Service?
I’m still working on a good one.
For me, this year will mean putting into practice what I’ve come to value most about my church — the emphasis on pacifism and peace-making, the practice of baptism after an individual’s readiness, the attention to both domestic and global service. This is all general talk, of course — I plan to expand on it later.
Bikes and afternoon streets downtown.
I often shy away from using words like religion and faith — they carry connotations and weight I’m still not sure if I’m ready to own, even if some sort of faith is at the root of why I’m here. But I love big-headed words like community and peace and simplicity, I love the poetry and story of Scripture (even if I still don’t understand half of it), I love the idea of practicing selflessness in everyday life (much easier said than done; the life of an aspiring writer breeds selfishness in itself).
This blog will serve to chronicle my weekly musings, stories and encounters, the grit and glitter of city life.
The streets of downtown DC, even with their straightforward numbers, led me blocks in the wrong direction before I finally found the White House. I suspect this year will follow in similar fashion, without map or neat lines. We go on blindly with the hope that our living and purpose will eventually be clear, and perhaps the goal is to learn to be content with the guessing game.
Here’s to a year of shooting in the dark.
And the view outside my window.
