22 July 2002

An updated version of this article entitled

“Seeking the Taproot of Anabaptist Spirituality”

is now available at

http://www.cascadiapublishinghouse.com/dsm/autumn04/schema.htm

Have we, as Mennonite people of faith, “lost our spirituality,” or perhaps never claimed a spirituality and, consequently, do we need to look to other traditions, such as Catholic spirituality, in order to recover this vital aspect of religious commitment? These questions emerged recently in the context of the recent consultation on Mennonite-Catholic dialog held at St. John’s Abbey in the rolling hills of Steuben County, Minnesota—Lake Wobegon country. It was a wonderful weekend—replete with Benedictine hospitality, reunion with old friends and the excitement of making new ones, stimulating papers, reciting Psalms with the monks, singing hymns with the Mennonites, good food and great (relatively cool) weather.

There is no question but that Catholic spirituality, as well as other expressions of faith such as charismatic worship, has much teach us. For me it was my second experience of the Benedictine community at St. John’s. I spent a sabbatical at the Ecumenical Institute on the edge of the campus working on a Luke commentary and worshipping with the monks. It was a life changing experience. When I returned to my work at AMBS, I knew that some parts of my life had to change—for the glory of God and my own well-being as well as the well-being of those whose lives I touch. I realized that my “people” responsibilities were crowding out other, also God-given, responsibilities to reflect, to write, to read, to worship, to nurture my own relationship with God. As a result, not only was I suffering the effects of “burn out,” but I was coming dangerously close to short changing my students by trying to minister to them from a dry well. The personal changes I made as a response to worshipping with the monks were only named correctly during this second experience at St. John’s by one of my new Catholic friends. Ah, she said, when I told her what I had done, you made a “rule” for yourself. She was right, of course, although I had not thought of it this way before. In the spirit of St. Benedict, I had redone my daily schedule to weave worship and work together into a more sane and God-conscious life. I had created a “rule” for myself.

I will always be grateful to the monks at St. John’s for bringing me to my senses in mid-life, like Peter realizing his God-given freedom in Acts 12. But I have no illusions that the source of these changes is Catholic spirituality. The Benedictines may have supplied the fertilizer and water for the growth—but the taproot is pure and simple Mennonite spirituality. So my answer to the first question of this essay is no, as Mennonites we may have misplaced our spirituality, but we have not lost it. It is at least recoverable. And my answer to the second question is that although we can find much that is helpful in other traditions and need to be passionately and widely involved in ecumenical dialog, we also have much within our own tradition that we can draw upon to come closer to God in our daily walk.

Let me explain. One of my early thoughts during my sabbatical with the Benedictines was “Wow, I haven’t prayed so much since I moved off the farm.” Growing up on a farm in Central Illinois, attending and then becoming a member of a small, Mennonite congregation, I was immersed in a vital spirituality—although we certainly would not have called it that then. In fact, in its rhythms and observances it had some things in common with the Benedictine spirituality of St. Johns, although again at that time and in that context we would probably have resisted the comparison. “Devotions” were a large part of our life. My parents had their private devotions before we got out of bed. They were completely unostentatious about this part of their lives. Were it not for the chance encounter passing through the kitchen to get a drink of water, the occasionally left open Bible with new markings, or the casual comment on a scripture text from the morning’s reading, we children would hardly have known they were doing their devotions. We also had family devotions, either at breakfast or supper, depending on the season of the year and the demands of farming. Part of setting the table was putting the Bible and Rejoice Magazine at my father’s plate. We met for family meals three times a day and always prayed before meals. The morning prayer was the long one—always remembering the church and the world as well as our own family concerns. The other two were short graces or sung graces. In the evenings before bedtime we had recreational reading and then prayers before bed. My parents always ended the day kneeling beside their bed in prayer. Again, were it not for those sleepy trips to the bathroom after we’d been asleep awhile, we would never have known they did so.

Devotions in my home were nothing out of the ordinary in my experience. Certainly the members of my beloved extended family would have been living their lives in much the same way as were the other families in our church community. I also do not remember having much of a sense of obligation, guilt or legalism about these habits. As we came into adulthood, there was a gentle expectation that we would adopt a devotional, or “quiet” time of our own. The church adults gave us some help occasionally. We discussed several times the values of reading through the whole Bible, although there were other suggestions as well. We were introduced to the ACTS prayer (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication)—one that I still find useful. But for all our struggles as a people with legalism, with all our attempts to live non-conformed lives by attending to matters of dress, entertainment, the pledge of allegiance, voting and many other issues, our devotional lives seem largely, at least in my memory, to have escaped this less than salutary attention.

Although we did not name our devotional lives as non-conforming to the world, I would suggest that the quiet joy these devotions gave our lives and the non-legalistic but obedient priority we gave them were in fact our finest act of non-conformity and a telling witness in our small world. As teenagers, the guidelines my parents established were that we could choose two extra-curricular activities a year in order to have time for church, family and ourselves—as my mother phrased it. It was not that school and community activities were devalued—they were highly valued and we had every sense that we were making difficult choices between many good things. But even in those quieter, less frantic decades, making these choices were highly non-conformist acts. At the time, of course, I would have cited the dancing and movies that we were beginning to enjoy somewhat surreptitiously as the issues of non-conformity—and I was more likely to resist the value than embrace it. With the passing of the years and the generations, however, I am more aware of just what an effective if matter-of-act witness this lifestyle had in my community.

This spirituality had strengths and weaknesses, as do all spiritualities. One of the strengths is that it was clearly Trinitarian. We related to God, Jesus and the Spirit with a fair amount of balance. We prayed to God, looked to God for providence, care and judgment. We followed Jesus in life, cross and resurrection. We assumed the presence of the Spirit, in us as individuals but indisputably in the gathered community. Another strength was that this expression of faith was both communitarian and hospitality minded. We practiced communal prayer and we reached out to the community around us. Wednesday evenings were prayer meeting nights. The adults spent the largest part of that meeting in prayer. After a bit of singing and scripture, the concerns of the community were mentioned and then we “entered into a time of prayer.” Silent prayer and intercessory prayer were both used. Sometimes prayer was discussed a bit. Some pieces of advice that I remember from those meetings included the following: Prayer should not be entered into lightly. Humility and self-examination are encouraged. Prayer is not to be used against people, or as “sanctified gossip.” Since prayers will be answered, we need to take responsibility for our requests and be willing to be part of the answer to the prayer. Prayer was, in short, a matter of vital interest and a real part of life in the faith. Hospitality meant Sunday dinners, of course, but also working intensively with a family with an alcoholic father, providing garden ground for poor families in Peoria, responding to disasters and other social needs.

This spirituality had weaknesses as well. Material social needs, both local and global, were attended with ardor and conviction, but without much real understanding of or commitment to the deeper issues of justice underlying many of them. Over the years, my father sensed very little support from our congregation for his interests in these issues of root causes. Liturgy and the sacraments did not feature largely in this spirituality and, consequently, reverence and awe of a certain kind at least were sacrificed. Twice a year footwashing and communion were celebrated with the solemnity that befits certain understandings of these practices but excludes or plays down other, more celebrative or joyous understandings. Aesthetics also did not play a large part in this spirituality and our artists and poets have suffered a critical lack of appreciation.

In addition to these strengths and weaknesses, there are a couple of more attributes that cannot be easily characterized as strength or a weakness. One was evangelism. Evangelism, sharing the gospel, reaching out to the lost was a high value. But, oh my, did we ever struggle with it. We were simply not a glib people. Articulating our faith was something in which we believed mightily and did conscientiously—but ours was not the joyous, natural, outgoing evangelism of the Baptists down the road. Another of those difficult to categorize attributes was experience itself. Visions, mystical oneness with the divine, God’s direct voice were not unknown among our people. But neither were they expected, sought after or made large for the most part. In both these cases, evangelism and experience, we certainly avoided some of the worst kinds of misuse and irresponsible behavior with our rather taciturn matter-of-factness. But we also undoubtedly cut ourselves off from some of the richness and variety of the faithful Christian life as well.

In my exit interview with Patrick Henry, the director of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, located on the St. John’s campus, he used a curious expression to describe my contribution there. He told me that I had “handed them back themselves.” I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that—maybe it is impossible to tell from that angle. But I can articulate the opposite phenomenon. What my encounters with Catholic spirituality have done for me is “hand me back myself.” I have a deep, warm appreciation for the monks, the abbey, the ecumenical institute. I have learned much from their expressions of faith, their liturgy, their practices and disciplines. I love them. But their greatest gift is a renewed appreciation of my own tradition, my own heritage, my own disciplines of faith and a renewed determination to lively freely and practice fully following Jesus in that way. It is not that Mennonite spirituality is superior to Catholic spirituality. Any expression of faith has its strengths and weaknesses. But Mennonite spirituality, though not so formally articulated or institutionalized, is well worth our loving attention. The extension of that grace to me may have been Benedictine hospitality at its finest.