Lately, I have been thinking about the Biblical stories that star God’s voice. (You know, humans actually hearing God in the middle of the night and assuming it’s someone else.) I wish I could say God’s voice is what’s waking me up at 4 in the morning. Mostly, I fear that the news and election are the real voices echoing in my head. I admit, I still hold a bit of angst about getting involved politically, just as my ancestors did. It’s hard to come to terms with wanting to be an activist, an Anabaptist, and still realizing that we’re most likely never going to have a president who does not want to be the world’s superpower in both “peace” (military might) and prosperity at the sacrifice of other nations. It’s harder still to watch my heart harden around other Christians who do not share my views on how we should work on the “mighty ache” in the world, those who view “the other” candidate as more Christian. Yikes… But let’s be honest–mirroring Shane Claiborne’s views–if Jesus was running for president, neither of the candidates would vote for his platform! It’s so radical, so embracing of the weak and misguided, that we’d nervously laugh him off the platform. All this election talk and anxiety has made me realize something else: Most friends and family know where I stand politically; my t-shirts, posters, and discussions make it clear. But am I just as vocal or transparent about my support of a Christ-led life in the presence of those who don’t know me well? And how can I do this without becoming what I so “lovingly” now refer to as “a crazy Christian”?

When and where do you hear God’s voice, and what is keeping you up at night? Plant your suggestions here.

And in the meantime, here’s an excellent radio source for listening to diverse issues of faith, ethics, and the human heart not found on NPR or Fox called SPEAKING OF FAITH: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/

It’s easy to fall into “Acedia” (being so overwhelmed that we do nothing). But there are oodles of things one person can do for peace and justice. Here are just a few of those oodles:
-support the Peace Tax Foundation in various ways
-walk/bike/carpool
-buy a consistent fair trade item (like coffee, wedding gifts, etc. etc.)
-dialogue and connect face-to-face (I’ve gotten to know a classmate whose husband is a soldier in Afghanistan…it’s been challenging and humbling)
-read poetry! :) OK, I’m a poet. I’m biased. But words do powerful, lifechanging things to people!

I am not prepared to see her on Somalia Drive.
We have the car windows closed, partly
so that no arm can reach in, see what white skin
has to offer, partly to block out the loudest fumes.

Diesel trucks and busloads in front of us mimic
slowly rolling waves (children have been lost
in the mahogany puddles of rainy season potholes.)
Roads pulse with people, dogs with teats dragging, lines
of goats. We crawl past a slaughterhouse, a Coca Cola factory,
a trailer packed with workers singing
of the Promised Land.

We are some sort of horrible royalty.

After all, we are from America,
that real Promised Land that sent freed slaves here
to start Liberia, also the home of “freedom.” We are tied
to these people outside our car windows
by blood and sweat and quiet
greed. Men suck their teeth
at my mother and me, their way of getting
our unnerved attention. Looks of longing,
money signs, and awe. Babies often cry—
to them, we are ghosts.

I have learned to be overly interested in my shoes.

When I do glance up this day, I see a flash of white,
and there she is: a blue-black body
all treble clef curves, a bucket of bananas
cocked on her head. We look
at one another, five seconds
at the most.

I am becoming numb to seeing more and more
young men with missing limbs or hands,
the sickening artwork of civil war.
But meeting eyes with a faceless girl—where cheeks
and nose should be, only white, only white—

who can ever get used to that?
____________
A HUNDRED WAYS TO KILL A ROOSTER

Just wait, they will
get hungry, my mothers says at breakfast,
after I complain. Your luxury is to be annoyed
by little things. In early morning,
when our neighbors rise at four
to make sweet, soft foolah bread to sell
on Tubman Boulevard, only rainy season
at its worst can keep him from prying
open the world.

I’ve watched him closely
outside the screened window of the room
where I take my bucket bath: he runs stiffly
through puddles, green-gold feathers
ducking through legs of children to escape
the sudden, mean downpours, to crow happily
inside instead.

Across the street, the Nancy Doe
market slowly spurts to life, its war-damaged
buildings still housing dried fish and fufu, children
selling mayonnaise jars of gasoline, pushing
wheelbarrows of flip-flops who
shake their shy heads “no” when we
ask them for a picture. No one needs
another soul stolen
here. Even from the market,
I make out the rooster’s cackle.

I get to know him
well; by the end of a month,
I am sure that he sounds different
when announcing a storm
blowing in off ELWA beach (like a trumpet
that’s been trampled). As he becomes that grandfather clock
villain-laughing-out each quarter hour,
I wish for him instead a slow death
by fire ants. Even
the over-sized avocado pits at lunch
begin to seem like the perfect artillery.

I think of other weapons I could hurl
over the compound wall, past the highest layer
of broken glass and cur-le-cued
barbed wire. Always the generous American,
I try to think of things his struggling owners
could use: two shoes? a dictionary? a pot
or a pan?

Liberia’s Independence Day–a morning that brings
loud singing and strangers to our door smiling
and asking for the gifts they know
we can give, and my last sweaty
morning in Africa–I wait
for his usual green-and-gold boasting.
How fitting that silence is all that comes
over the compound wall; it means a fuller thing.
________
OUR WOMEN CAN BE MINISTERS (OF MUSIC)

Sometimes I think that African music
was planted like an acorn in the heart
of my white mother. Saasaahs and drums
always sat in the corners of our two-story
house in the farmlands of Ohio.

The need was always there
for a loud and pulsing rhythm that would drag her
from straight Protestant benches and into
church aisles 7,000 miles from head coverings,
pursed lips and elders. Dancing joy-filled to the pulpit,
she would sing out in languages
she’d never known. Before

Africa wooed her, her
white church choir belted out spirituals
but always sounded bored or desperate, singing
with as much movement as they could muster,
accustomed to a cappella harmonies, the tender
blending of human voices.

In Africa, God is deaf—the singers must
shout louder! One voice over another! And my mother
wails. My mother juts her arms into
the rafters. From that acorn in her heart,
she grows winding tiara branches, white and sharp
and sun-bleached, longing for sky.

The Kisii choir swells. She teaches them
Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”
by rote, one part at a time. They teach her
how to sing loud and long from the very beginning
of the self, from the part that God heard
long before we ever felt
its sprouting.

It’s no secret that young people in America–often faced with too many options or life choices– go through a “quarter life crisis” (just see the whole book series on the subject). I’ve been rethinking my life goals a LOT recently, along with all the assumptions and expectations that go/went with them. I used to believe that every “Anne of green gabels” had her “Gilbert” out there. I used to believe that God knew what was in store for our hearts and protected them. Now, I’m not so sure. Maybe I’ll be singing a different tune in ten years, but for now, I’m content to sit with my multiplying questions.

Over the past few months, I’ve mourned the crumpling of a nearly 4-yr. romance I was sure was God’s calling. When it came down to it, the man I was dating somehow had grown into the *symbol* for a lifelong commitment rather than a man who was actually willing to commit to one. Only after our breakup did I realize just how much of my life I had planned around our future together. But after years of dating, his “I” still became defensive when we talked about becoming a “we.” This may sound harsh, and I don’t (exactly) mean it to be; I know that I played a part in the breakup, as well. But, quite frankly, I am still at a loss. Based on the relationships around me–those of my parents, sister and brother-in-law, grandparents, etc.–I assumed it’s only natural that a serious relationship eventually turns towards a marriage. No so. Not so…What naive world have I been in?!

According to many of my coworkers at “the grad school age,” (male and female, Christian and nonChristian), our individualism is way too fragile and important to risk “losing” too soon. How do I know this? Because we seem to feel much more comfortable nowadays waiting until we *have* to commit to anything–in relationships, we tell ourselves we’re holding out for the perfect person and time to change our lives. Sure, the divorce rate in this country doesn’t help, and no–I’m not saying we should all be trying to get a ‘MRS.’ degree (my mom was bummed when I didn’t go to a Menno college for this reason). I just want to know why we seem to be accepting the jist of films like THE LAST KISS and TRUST THE MAN as truth (that we can’t “help” eventually cheating and should therefore avoid real love, that monogomy is not really natural, that the “self” is most important). WHAT?! Let me scream into a pillow, let me open all my car doors and slam them one by one, let me cut off all my hair in an attempt to revisit my teenage, walled-up, Tori Amos-listening self (which I did in that exact order yesterday and now feel much better).

Journalist Laura Sessions Stepp has just published UNHOOKED, a book that explores our generation’s willingness to take part in the “hook up” culture; yet, she says, we are also “hooked” on the noncomittal world we live in (http://www.unhookedgeneration.com/aboutbk.php). Stepp doesn’t just focus on physical “hook ups;” her book also questions and explores different activites and ideas that can become fast addictions focused on the self. Are we purposefully uprooting community? Why should we even think about “choosing” love, when we’re so often convinced that “everything will eventually work out,” that we have all the time in the world?

Now, even as I’m writing this, the feminist, strong-willed individual in me is dramatically rolling her eyes and can’t believe this blog post even exists. And yet…and yet…there is also the part of me who mourns something she can’t quite name, something she sees unfolding around her in this university town and beyond. Marriage shouldn’t be rushed. It shouldn’t ever, ever be forced. But shouldn’t it at least be a possibility?

Talking Poetry With the Amish
-For David Kline

The world knows your quiet; I know
your harvest of words. It has been a year

since we stood in your back field, recited
Berry and Frost. You have no doubt

harnessed the draft horses hundreds of times,
sat on front porches with libraries of books

after long seasons of talking, listening, arguing
with the earth. I remember

your feet—it sounds silly, yes—but
I’d never seen an Amishman in *sandals*.

I remember, too, the swift June rain, chasing us
under two maples. You gave me your barn coat, and the sky

threw its body down—we almost had to shout—What do you
think of the president these days? How is the market for

soybeans, Jerseys? Water gathered in the rows you’d been plowing,
spilled from your hat brim; I looked down at mud-flecked ankles.

Can we really write out
how this world aches, how the heart
will never stop planting its questions?
why we are born into stillness, spend
the rest of our days filling it in with
anything, anyone really?

The team horses stood, steaming statues—I remember
their quiet presence, too. Have you changed that stanza,

the one where you’re out picking blackberries? Have I
changed my life, after that day in your field, since

running to dodge lightning, waving to your sons, then backing
my car down the drive? Have I paused long enough to gather myself

up from calling highways, appointments, the poems
yet to be written? to glean myself back
into the stillness, the quiet in the land?
_______

MENNONITE SERMON #1:

Those who are not among us bring
their cameras and their children. They leave
what’s heavy on their hearts for a morning, a day.

Those who are not among us bring ready
billfolds, pay for bentwood rockers and log cabin
quilts. So easy to buy
an hour of quiet. It is not surprising
on Sunday mornings to see a car with windows

open stopped where the road dips between Salem and
Sonnenberg. God is a cappella
on the seventh day of the week; hymn crosses
hymn between these two churches, and music carries
off their centuries of feuding (this the visitors
don’t know; it is rarely talked of now).

What does our martyr family think as we
sit back, barter our quiet to the world, pretend
that we are holy, different? “Six friends ended their lives in
great joy, and those that saw them burn went and
penned a hymn, the first letter of each verse
replacing the names of the dead.”

Do *we* ever feel warm when breathing deep to offer up
our harmony? Do we think of them
as verses change? And what *would* they say, after
watching us join the frontlines, deadlines?

“Burn us, bake us, drown us,
World, and in the end, make us yours”?

______
MENNONITE SERMON #2:
WHAT WOMEN SHOULD NOT WRITE

From the pulpit, congregations
mimic those Kansas fields,
the ones we’re supposed
to have visited
already: wind-swept-
predictable, they wait
for the coming
of a crop they’re sure
to recognize.

* * *

For years,
I have carried
my body
like something
I couldn’t quite
shake, like someone
I dreaded
meeting in public.

For I’ve never known
what to say to her
in private, have never
sat— just the two of us—
on front porches
before a storm
or a bleeding winter
sunset, because
she’s not the kind
you’re taught to want
to bring home.

* * *

Finally, I am loving
what I carry. On paper,
the world drips
off of shoulders.
Body, I need
you! Body, I sing
you onto the page!

From the pulpit,
the World spreads
its legs. And I open
my mouth to tell it
you’re beautiful.
______

POEM WRITTEN THREE HOURS FROM HOME
*Cleave- 1. to split with a sharp instrument…along a natural line of division
2. to pierce or penetrate
3. to make one’s way
4. to be faithful
_American Heritage Dictionary_

What dreams are ploughed under when we cleave ourselves
to the land of our fathers, mothers, martyred soil wealthy with roots!
*** Twenty years ago now we stumbled across the dumping ground
of our ancestors: bits of blue china accidentally dropped, glass
insulators split down the middle; rusted shovel heads, hammers, wire-
rimmed frames at the bottom of a creek bank. For two sisters, it was
Egypt, this watery unearthing. Pieces of people we’d never meet but could
hold, rub clean in our hands. *** For centuries, the Amish have built
their daudies—houses that birth houses to keep parents close
and safe, part of the journey. From the road, it’s often obvious where
new planks have sprung: sudden porches, chimneys, back screen doors.
New rooms for new roles. *** How emptying it must sometimes feel
for the aging, living so near to their home, not truly in it. Do they grope
for the past all the more loudly because of its proximity, because
of its sudden forbidden fruit? *** To keep his only daughter near, my grandfather
gave open fields and breathing forest as wedding gifts. A piece of the farm.
Such a generous father; such a quiet yoke. Our daudy was fashioned
from trees, streams, the path through high corn to Grandma’s kitchen.
*** Now, I do not know where to start my own building, when to pound
the first nails—onto what, onto whom *** do I cleave?

All poems by Rebecca Rossiter/c 2006

Here in Athens, Ohio, we take pride in many things: our farmers’ market, fair trade coffee shops, beautiful hiking trails and rock formations, and the obvious diversity in our population: undergrads known for making O.U. the on-again-off-again #1 party school, international grad students, professors in tweed jackets, and colorful Appalachian locals. I revel in the atmosphere of a college town, especially one so “progressive,” at least for Ohio. I have to face it; I like to feel “different,” on the “verge” of something, and Athens allows me to have this faith in Humanity’s ability to create and evolve. Speaking of the “p” word (”progressive,” in case you are confused), one would think that being Mennonite would immediately peg us as “different” in the larger society. But the kind of Mennonite I want to be–actively seeking out peace and justice according to Christ’s example, accountable simple living and community, and heck–maybe even preaching one day– does not involve head coverings or long hair and dresses. So what distinguishes my “sect” of Mennos, those who have greatly assimilated back into the dominating culture out of fear, comfort, or for some other reason? I’m talking mostly here to more rural Menno congregations. What makes our church services and lives unique from other Protestants? At times, I ache for something visible to “mark” me as a Mennonite Anabaptist. Wearing my “I love the people of Iraq” and “Pray for Peace: Act for Peace” buttons aren’t enough; many others can don these and practice any number of faiths, and if I wore them to my home congregation, I would be “drawing attention to myself.” It seems like acting locally for my faith now-a-days is labled “political.” Ummm…Don’t we strive to follow the example of one of the most political figures in history?

Why do I want to be “recognized” so badly? It isn’t for fame or acceptance, that’s for sure. Well, as I mentioned already (though still considered “prideful” in some churches) I want to be seen as “different,” living “off the map” or with a version of Christianity that is not based on Paul’s teachings but more firmly on Christ’s, knowing that this is not always a popular example. “So live your life like Christ would, and people will notice,” you might be thinking. Sure, Ok. Sounds like a plan. But I still have to ask, what is Mennonite Church USA doing today to present itself (ourselves) as an alternative example of Christ-like living? It is wonderful to have so many missionaries abroad, to send school kits to Africa and hold relief sales. We are so good at global action, but our local communities, our country as a whole needs as many prophets as they can get. What if EVERY Menno was a supporter of the peace tax fund? What if EVERY Menno carpooled at least once a week? What if someone from each congregation wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper each week? These might seem like small and silly examples of living out our peace and justice mantras, but I think they would make people take notice. We need a revival. A big, peace-preachin’, harmony-singin’, truth-speakin’ revival. How great it will be to know ourselves again, to let the world know US, not by our silences, but by our “loud living!” Let’s be different; let’s more than call ourselves Mennonite–let’s BE Mennonite!