On my list: learning to prefer biking (as well as walking). Deciding to give up flying for a year (which I may extend, who knows). Cooking from scratch — it’s a very Menno thing to do and yet growing your own food, knowing where it comes from and how it’s made isn’t something most people do in the U.S. Future goals: learning how to sew and knit; composting, growing a garden and canning food. I’d love to get to the point where I give up my car, but I’m not there yet.

The parallel to stuff I’ve been thinking about comes with hot showers. I just really love me a long, hot, soaking shower. This unfortunate fact (given the energy that hot showers use) came up in a conversation with a friend when we were discussing rationalizations — “I don’t buy fancy things very often, so it’s OK if treat myself to fancy cheese.” “I don’t shower very often, so it’s OK if I take really hot showers.”

What was unsettling to me was the idea of ethical behavior as SACRIFICE. That giving up fancy cheeses or hot showers are sacrifices, of which we must make the requisite number in order to keep our “I’m an ethical person” badge. At least this is how I’ve thought about it sometimes — trying to rack up karma points (which I then cash in when I do something less ethical).

But the exciting point about the conversation was that then I remembered one time when I needed to take a shower in a place with only a bathtub. So what I ended up doing was kneeling in the tub, giving myself a cold splash bath and then a vigorious drying. And the surprising thing was that the whole thing was invigorating — taking time to kneel and reflect in the morning is something I never do otherwise, and the cold woke me up and filled me with energized alertness I never get with a hot shower.

So recently I’ve been trying cold showers more often, and noting that (in contrast to the warm comfort of hot showers) feeling awake, alert, and energized are a kind of slant on batheing that’s a different kind of good.

To tie it back to Tim’s comment, I wonder if really opening up to the Other can be an invigorating shower that helps change what we value in church. And not that we have to stick to binaries (I’ve also tried the lather-up-and-just-rinse-quick-with-lukewarm-water approach a few times and that we benefit from experimentation), but a general point for me semms to be that rationalizations can be red flags to show us when we’re understanding the “ethical” choice as a sacrifice.

Cause I don’t want my motivation for ethical behaviors to be the feeling that I SHOULD sacrifice. I want to leave unethical acts based on finding the ways that pursuing ethical ones are BETTER and more enjoyable. It feels more sustainable that way.

For me that has looked like trying cold showers, realizing how great studying feminism is, and learning to prefer biking. How about other folks?

I’ve actually been doing a lot of talking about this with other Mennonite friends recently. Here are a couple things I’ve come up with:

Yes, we do rely on the Mennonite game to make connections. It really gets on my knerves sometimes. Partly because I grew up as an outside in the Mennonite community (although I am ehtnicly Mennonite) and can’t play it well, and partly because I married a non-Mennonite, and he gets so frustrated with it, and partly because I play it too much. It’s like playing the “Seven Degrees” game. It’s a way to understand connections and similarities. It’s a little language we have. And, it is fun, isn’t it? But only when you are an insider.

As a result, it contributes strongly to church culture. So, if you have people that rely on making connections to their community in this way it’s no wonder that we cannot relate to the community around us.

I do also wonder if the experience of discrimination, oppression from the early 16th century (and from early 20th century with CO status of our young men)have somehow entered our DNA, causing us to be suspicious of outsiders. I get this visual image of Mennonites as folks that know how to circle the wagons and protect the community, but don’t know when it’s ok to let visitors in.

I recently visited a Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia, to see if it would be a good match for me. I found that the Lutherans deal with these insular issues as well. Both the Menonites and Lutherans have a cultural and denominational componant to them. This particular seminary is working to prepare pastors for ministry in these communities, giving pastors tools to move a community away from naval-gazing to relating to their community. I’m hoping, if I get in, that they will give me some tools for working in my Mennonite community.

Part of the issue is clear to me. I love, and am very comfortable in, contexts of committed, ethnically Mennonite folk (helps, also, if they’re US American, white, educated and maybe from my hometown). I love, also, getting acquanted with unfamiliarities - people, places, concepts… but I have to admit that the change - which is inevitable in the latter - has been cause for remaining in my comfort zone. In this context in particular, it means that: if my church community really opens up to the Other (even if the Other is not that much different) it will radically change.

So this social-religious inhibition, this fear of change via uncomfortability, is not a new concept. But maybe it would be helpful for some of us white ethnic Mennonites to start admitting our fear.

I’ll leave it at that.

As a semi-introvert, I can identify with the leadership by default frustration. In situations like that, I find its important to remember that leadership in a vacuum is still just as real, if not more so, than leadership because of blinding charismatic ability or seniority or some other authority. I often find its an opportunity to grow into a role and challenge myself. I hope you’re finding the same thing.

This last Sunday, I participtated in a membership class at my church, as a member of the elders. One potential new member told of his experience in studying Philadelphia Mennonite churches. He felt special affinity with two particular churches, both white and middle class. The other Philly churches had theologies that he was very unomfortable with, but an energy that he could not resist. The white churches (mine included–sadly) pay alot of lip service to the desire to be inclusive and involved in the community, but I think are held back by being….well, ethnicly menno. Ugh. It’s so frustrating.

Story #2. As an elder, part of my call is to continue to push the congregation forward–to work on the vision on the church community. Can you beleive that in one of our last meetings, we had an hour long discussion on whether this group of people was supposed to be assuming the power to move the congregation forward. That had to be one of the most frustrating meetings in all of my church life. Some on the committee could not come to grips with assuming the power/responsibility of being a church leader.

I struggle with being a young adult and a church leader. I never feel like I am taken seriously. I know I am a leader in my congregation by default, because no one had the energy the year I was elected to contribute to leadership.

Mennonites do not like to claim power, nor do they like to give it up. Strange paradox.