A gesture and a death

A gesture and a death jostle for my attention at Borrowing Bones this morning, so I think I’ll let both of them be and if they illuminate one another in any way, well, so much the better.

Like so many other ‘watchers from afar’ I followed news of the papal conclave and the election of Pope Francis with keen interest, then satisfaction. It’s too early to know how, or if, he’ll manage the challenges facing the church, but media reports are full of pleasure at the signs of difference and new direction: the name, the simpler quarters, the calmer clothing (black shoes, not red), the washing (in the ritual footwashing ceremony just past) of two women’s feet as well as a Muslim’s, his warmth with people. Much of this is gesture, perhaps, though genuine gesture, it seems, and thus: so far so good. (I like Martin Marty’s take on it with an April Fools theme at Sightings.)

One gesture on Easter Sunday was especially moving — the one where he kissed the handicapped child. The way the child embraced him in return and how he then stayed with that embrace seemed to me not so much a sign of Pope Francis’ ‘new style’ as it was an unplanned revelation of his essential spirit. (It can be seen near the end of this short news clip.)  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/pope-francis-celebrates-easter-sunday-18848773

Speaking of women…

In a kind of offshoot from my previous post, I find myself checking in at my 2006 journals, to see whether my memory of the awe, even euphoria, I felt when the Mennonite Brethren conference I was part of passed a resolution freeing women for ministry leadership (this after a long process of debate and study over many years) is accurate or if it has been imagined into stronger color over time.

I find it’s accurate enough. I was trembling through the final discussions of that particular convention, I noted, because it mattered that much, and then came the surprise, even shock, of the resolution passing, solidly enough (the news report here), a sense of “wow” as it began to sink in. “I feel that something has been loosed on earth, as we prayed…” my private pages said, bursting with gratitude.

Nearly six years later, I confess I’m disappointed in the “since then.” My impression — anecdotal, I realize, since I’m no longer involved in the conference — is that while women’s participation goes on a-pace in some congregations, the ethos of the Mennonite Brethren denomination as such has not changed to reflect that decision — or “the spirit, the direction” it represented, as one of the men who worked hard on that process put it to me recently. Perhaps it’s even regressed.

Olden-days Sophia online

Here’s some excellent news. Sophia, a magazine produced by a volunteer collective of mostly Mennonite Brethren women between 1991 and 2003 is now available for reading online, in PDF format.

Thank you, Conrad Stoesz, archivist, for your ongoing interest and efforts to provide, as you put it in a letter some time ago, “a new level of access to the unique content of Sophia.” It was  unique, I think, looking back, and I’m grateful – and proud of – the work, friendships, and energy it represents, and grateful too to have been part of the Sophia collective for some time. In 2006, I wrote a brief overview and assessment of Sophia for  the Mennonite Historian, but each woman who was involved will have her own perspective and memories, I’m sure. (One of my friends responded to Conrad’s note about the project, “Yikes! Those old rants of mine…” though believe me, she was gracious and articulate.) At any rate, I’m glad the magazine is available this way, and who knows, perhaps some day a grad student who needs a thesis topic will find a fascinating one in these women of the “olden days.”

A Certain Woman: for IWD

A small stop along our Lenten journey to celebrate International Women’s Day — with a poem, first published in Sophia in 1999, slightly revised here.

The many, and the one

Mennonite Heritage Tour (Last of 8).

"Pilate" (Stn. 1) by Jerzy Duda Gracz

In a room above the Black Madonna shrine at Jasna Gora, Czestochawa (Poland), I was startled by probably the homeliest Jesus I have ever seen. He appears there in a series of 18 remarkable Stations of the Cross paintings by Jerzy Duda Gracz. Here the incarnation of God is truly of “no form or comeliness…no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2).

I was startled, yes, and deeply moved. There is a compelling power in these paintings, in part, I think, because of their contemporary and local settings. The first station (“Pilate”), for example, depicts the condemned man in the midst of a media circus; beside Pilate’s bowl stands a cardinal wearing a blindfold. The eleventh (“Crucifixion”) references the victims of prisons and concentration camps, as well as the martrydom of Father Popieluszko. The thirteenth (“Pieta”) shows Christ in the arms of Mary as represented by the monastery’s Black Madonna icon, her painted hand under his armpit. (View series here.)

Woman, inmate at Auschwitz

These paintings formed a kind of spiritual backdrop for our next stop, a sobering visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. How does one begin to comprehend the suffering memorialized here? The numbers overwhelm, the piles of shoes and hair and suitcases overwhelm, the rows of sheds that housed the camp’s prisoners overwhelm. Don’t think of the millions, someone said to me. Think of one, and one, and one. Yes, but “one” will not hold still. When I tried to take a photo of “one” woman, my clumsy photography attempts were a symbol of the impossible. Here in the “one” were the reflections of more images opposite (see left). It is, in truth, the many that I had to confront. I looked at these beautiful women’s faces and the fact of millions pushed its way into them, and they all grew thin and grotesque with the evil that was done upon them. At the same time I kept seeing One — Jesus with the likeness of a Gracz painting, collapsing in a tangle of bodies as poison from a capsule filled the chamber, his hair tossed on the huge piles of hair used for mattresses and the like, his shoes tossed onto the mountain of old and unnecessary shoes.

Victims' shoes, Auschwitz concentration amp

Finding our names

The former Mennonite church at Thiensdorf (Jezioro), now used for storage.

Mennonite Heritage Tour: encounters with women (part 7 of 8).

As my reflections on our Mennonite Heritage Tour wind their way into Poland and soon to an end, I have to confess in advance that this post is a bit of a stretch as far as the “encounters with women” theme is concerned. Poland — or “Prussia” as we also think of it in Mennonite history – made its connections to me through place(s) rather than people.

House in the "Vorlauben" style

We spent time in Gdansk (Danzig) and the Vistula Delta. There was Neptune again, at the fountain just across from our lodgings on Long Street in the centre of the city, designed as it turns out, by a Mennonite, Abraham van den Block, as was the armoury building and the Golden Gate. Mennonites lived in the region from 1540 to 1945, and in spite of any number of restrictions on citizenship and conflict over their beliefs, made their presence felt in the look of the land – the dikes and farmlands of the delta – and in architectural features and innovations of various kinds. In Elbing, we stopped at a museum exhibit on the Mennonites. We spent hours driving about the countryside, viewing former Mennonite homes (of the house-barn or Vorlauben style) and churches, some in good repair and used now by other groups, some falling into ruin.

A Harder grave in Heubuden, Poland

We poked around cemeteries. I don’t know what it is about cemeteries, but it didn’t matter how many we had stopped at already or how overgrown or indecipherable the stones, I was always eager to hop out at the next one. What were we looking for? Nothing – no one – in particular, at least H. and I weren’t, even though both our families came from Poland/Prussia before they came from Russia/Ukraine. Still, it was exciting whenever we spotted “our” names: Doerksen or Harder, that is, for me, and some version of Dueck or Rahn for him. These were the lands we came from and these — generations back — the people.

My paternal great-great-grandfather, David Doerksen “rode away from home, on horseback” he wrote, on the 9^thof July, 1838, home being Lakendorff, Elbingen district, Prussia. Rode off to Russia. His parents, Maria and father Peter, of Lakendorff , stayed in Prussia and were buried in the Furstenau cemetery (“God give him a happy resurrection,” David also wrote. “God give her a happy resurrection.”)

H's great-great-grandfather Johannes Rahn (1834-1913) with his brother Jacob and Abram, in Altendorf, W. Prussia, 1905

My maternal great-great-great grandfather Peter Harder, a weaver, and wife Maria, were born in the Lackendorf jurisdiction of Elbing, Prussia too. At 40 and 36 they took themselves and their three children, their wagon, plow, cultivator, four horses, seven cattle, 40 cornsheaves and 20 bales of hay off to Russia, where they settled in Fischau.

And H’s great-great grandfather Johannes Rahn was from the Altendorf area of Prussia. He later moved to the Crimea, though his brothers stayed in West Prussia. We have a photo of the three of them, in fact, taken there in 1905 (right).

Anna Braun, born Rahn

If any of “our” names on these stones were relatives, they were distant, probably from some sideways branch. But each gave my heart a little squeeze anyway. It was a delight to spot, in the cemetery in Heubuden, which is the best restored of the Poland Mennonite cemeteries, an Anna Braun, born Rahn, and to see too that she was called “my dear wife” and “our good mother.” To be married, to be a mother, these are long and demanding and significant roles. Relative or not, I’m glad that Anna’s success at them was appreciated with those words.

The Teutonic Knights at Castle Malborg, not relatives -- at least as far as I know

Who was Anneliese Walter?

Mennonite Heritage Tour: encounters with women (part 5 of 8). Introduction.

Berlin was one of my favourite stops. We did a hop-on-and-off-the-bus city tour and the weather was perfect, sunny and pleasant but not hot, and maybe it’s the sense of accomplishment you get riding the top of one of those double-decker tourist buses, as if you’ve actually grasped the important places, all those sights you’re rolling by. An illusion of course, but a very pleasant one while it’s happening.

Brandenburg Gate

We also roamed on foot around the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie, went into the startling valleys and alleys of the Holocaust Memorial, and had an interesting visit to the roof terrace of the Reichstag Building, with its panoramic views. Berlin seemed to me all energy and confidence. So much of it looked smart and new.

German colours in the Reichstag

We happened to be in Berlin on the day it was commemorating 50 years since the building of the Berlin Wall. On August 13, 1961 — now known as “Barbed Wire Sunday” — Berliners woke to find East German security forces putting up fences and barbed wire barriers along the inner border. The barriers became increasingly impenetrable; the Wall divided a city, neighbourhoods, families.

All I felt in Berlin, however, commemoration around us notwithstanding, was the Wall’s absence. And it gives me the strangest feeling somehow – almost akin to envy – that people my age and younger saw and experienced it and I didn’t and now it’s gone. My younger sisters, for example, who travelled around Europe in their youth, well remember crossing the border, seeing it. What’s left now is mostly historical gesture: a short stretch of cement and barbed wire to view as example, memorial flowers, black and white photos, a plaque and a brick line running along the streets to indicate where the “Mauer” had been. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the Wall is gone; I cried the day I watched on television as the crowds of people who had gathered broke through it. It’s just that it came up and then came down, and all that Terrible and Good happened in my lifetime! Close enough to touch but I couldn’t really touch it. I touched wholeness and bustle instead. Happiness. Absence.

Name on a memorial cross at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin

I looked at some of the names on crosses at Checkpoint Charlie which commemorate people who were killed trying to cross the border. Anneliese Walter, one said. Born 19.04.20. Shot at the inner border before the Wall was erected, 28.10.50. I know nothing else about Anneliese Walter, have no idea why at 30 she needed so desperately to be on the other side. If she were still alive, she would be a little older than my mother is. I know she has a story. But only her name, two dates, and “shot” were there, and we tourists, milling cheerfully about. It was, as I said, just such a marvellous day.

View from rooftop terrace of the Reichstag building.

“Owning” Muenster

Mennonite Heritage Tour: encounters with women (part 5 of 8). Introduction. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

At dinner on the evening before our Mennonite Heritage Tour’s visit to Muenster, one of the people in our group remarked that we needed to “own” Muenster even as we “own” Auschwitz (where we would stop later).

By Auschwitz, of course, he meant the Holocaust, and by Muenster, he meant the historical events of 1534-35 in that city – the “rebellion” of radical Anabaptists in which they tried to establish the “New Jerusalem” there, complete with a king (Jan van Leiden), polygamy, extreme violence, a long siege, eventual victory by a Bishop’s army on the outside, and the killing of hundreds, with the leaders’ bodies displayed as a warning in three cages that still hang on the city’s Lamberti Church.

His comment gave me pause. If “owning” history means to look at what happened, to enter into its achievements or horrors, whatever the case might be, to engage with it morally as well as mentally, then I had certainly done that with Auschwitz over the years.

But it had not occurred to me to do the same with Muenster. I knew only the sketchy details, as above. I’d supposed our Muenster stop might be like viewing a pickled frog in a lab: necessary, perhaps, but just for a quick look, an “ugh!” and on to more palatable things.

After our dinner conversation, however, I resolved to — at the least — pay attention in Muenster. Which I tried to do the next morning as we wandered along brick sidewalks and through a market colourful with flowers and fruits and vegetables, in and out of a church and past famous buildings, craning our necks to see those three cages, way way up… And then, in the museum where the Anabaptist period of the city is also on display, I was grabbed into the history of Muenster by a painting.

"Jan van Leiden verstoesst seine Gemahlin Elisabeth Wandscherer" by Caspar Goerke, 1852 (internet image)

The painting tells the dramatic story of Elisabeth Wandscherer, one of sixteen wives of (King) Jan van Leiden. We see her on her knees, dropping her jewelry in front of him. She begs to leave. It can’t be God’s will, she says, that people in Muenster are starving [because of the siege] while the king and his court live in luxury. We see that the king’s hand is fisted. We learn that in the next, unpainted, scene he will have her dragged out and beheaded for her resistance — wielding the sword himself — and that afterwards, he and his other wives and the crowds will dance and sing “To God on high be glory.”

Yes, it’s stories with their personalities, complexity, and drama that lead us into “owning” the past. They force us to interact with human dilemmas, sorrows, failures, and courage. This is what the story of Elisabeth Wandscherer did for me and Muenster.

If only I were younger!

Mennonite Heritage Tour: encounters with women (part 4 of 8). Introduction. Part 2. Part 3.

If only I were younger! Because — if I were — I might try to learn Dutch. Then I could read Anne Zernike’s autobiography, Een vrouw in het wondere ambt: Herinneringen van een predikanate, as well as the biography of her currently being written by PhD student Froukje Pitstra.

Plaque noting Anne Zernike was ordained here

Anne Zernike (1887 – 1972) was the first female pastor in the Netherlands. The 100^th anniversary of her ordination on November 5, 1911 in the Bovenknijpe Mennonite congregation, where she served from 1911 to 1915, is one of the anniversaries the Dutch Mennonites are celebrating this year.

View of de Knijpe; building with round window is the church.

Our tour group went to de Knijpe, to see the church and to view an exhibition about Anne Zernike. The village is still a pretty row of houses along both sides of a canal, though there are roads, now, for cars. Bovenknijpe pastor Jelle de Groot kindly translated one exhibition panel after the next for us, and then, in a room off the vestibule, we were served the most amazing cake and coffee by other members of the church. It was an inspiring stop!

Anne Zernike as a young woman, portraits by Jan Mankes; one of the panels in the exhibition.

There is so much about Anne Zernike that intrigues me.

Her family, for example: the parents mathematicians, encouraging of their children to study and become whatever they wished, brother Frederik awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, sister Elizabeth a writer and the first woman in the Netherlands awarded a literary prize.

Bovenknipje Church interior, with Anne Zernike exhibition.

Anne’s interest as a child in theology and her studies at the Mennonite seminary (“questions are a kind of fire,” said one of her professors – she must have had many questions). Her baptism in the Amsterdam Singelkerk (Mennonite) in 1909. Her years in Bovenknijpe where the local poverty shocked her. Her preaching – apparently good. Church attendance increased dramatically, perhaps initially out of curiosity that a woman would stand in the pulpit.

(Froukje Pitstra notes that the debate around women in the ministry in liberal churches at the time concerned psychological rather than scriptural arguments, psychology being a new field of study at the time. Zernike also wrote in her diary, however, that she would get anonymous notes with the text 1 Corinthians 14:34. She didn’t have to look it up anymore, she commented; she knew what it said! “Let your women keep silence in the churches…”)

Her marriage to artist Jan Mankes, described as Holland’s most tranquil painter,” and his wonderful work. How he proposed — painting a bird’s nest, then saying, “I want to make a bird’s nest with you.”

Row of trees, Jan Mankes, 1915, oil/canvas (internet image)

The way the Great War gripped her, and the passionate anti-militarism it provoked in her. Her congregants, though, were “in a mood of casual nonchalance, as if nothing happened… Their imagination did not extend beyond the boundaries of the province, their world had not collapsed… And I felt lonelier than ever among them.”

As was custom then, Anne resigned her post upon marriage. The couple had one son. In 1920, Jan died of TB. Anne went on to do further pastoral and theological work, also writing books and translating, the poet Rilke among others. She did not again find a post in a Mennonite church, though she sometimes worked in the Doopsgezinde in Almelo. Apparently her ideas were too radical, even for generally liberal Dutch Mennonite churches. This disappointed her.

And I’m disappointed that I can’t read Dutch!

(There’s more — in translation, if you need it too! — at the Anne Zernike website.)

Portrait of Anne Zernike as an older woman, by son Beintse.

A pioneering eccentric

Sien van Hulst (internet image)

Mennonite Heritage Tour: encounters with women, Part 3 (of 8). Introduction, Part 2.

Sien van Hulst (1868-1930) was a single woman, daughter of a prosperous Mennonite family in Harlingen, NL, who made a positive difference in the maternal death rates of her time.

We hear about Sien from Jan Meester. Jan is a Harlingen Mennonite who brims with knowledge and enthusiasm. He takes us on a brisk walking tour of relevant sites in his town. (The day before, he showed us the Pingjum Mennonite Church, where Menno Simons lived and worked, as well as the local, formerly Catholic church where Simons learned as a priest.)

The "hidden" Mennonite church of Pingjum, NL.

There are two strands of Dutch Mennonite (Doopsgezinde) history that keep bumping against each other for me during these days. One is the great persecution the Anabaptists experienced. We’re reminded of the outcome of that, as many fled to other parts of Europe (such as Poland/Prussia, which we will visit the following week); the Witmarsum church, in fact, currently has an exhibition on the Mennonite diaspora. We notice the secrecy it necessitated. Meeting places (called vermaning or Admonitions) often resemble houses or were hidden in other ways to escape detection.

The other strand is how those who remained in Holland eventually became accepted, respectable, and many of them wealthy and influential. Crossing the Afsluitdijk that connects north Holland and Friesland, for example, we see a statue of Cornelis Lely, engineer and designer of the plans for the Zuiderzee works. A Mennonite. There were the Honigs and the Breets. And the Harlingen van Hulsts and their daughter Sien.

The Harlingen Mennonite Church

Back home, I google Sien van Hulst to learn more about her. Most of it’s in Dutch, but the translations tell me she was a “contrary woman” with “a great sense of social justice.” Another sentence speaks of her “eccentric personality.” Maybe so, but she was a pioneer. A change agent. She founded a Society for District Nursing and Health Care in 1896, expanded the work of Green Cross across her region when it was founded in 1902, gave courses in maternal care and hygiene, paid attention to the importance of breastfeeding, and trained midwives and home nurses. She became a threat to the medical establishment of the time with her ideas, but perhaps it was her “eccentricity” that kept her going in her radical commitment to the poor. I want to think that it was also something in her Mennonite origins and beliefs.

Statue of Cornelis Lely, poised against the sea that his "works" hold back.

(P.S. This post is especially for my engineer son and doula/maternal-care expert daughter-in-law!)