Uncovered: Life Beyond
Join the conversations of Rebecca and Naomi, two ex-Amish Mennonite women who jumped the proverbial fence in their younger years and later experienced college as first-gen, non-traditional students. They discuss pursuing formal education while raising a family, navigating the hidden curriculum of academia, and other dimensions of reimagining a life beyond high-demand religion. Send your questions to uncoveredlifebeyond@gmail.com.
Uncovered: Life Beyond
26. Identity Quilts: Making Peace with the Patches
This episode is for anyone who has called many different places home and often waffles just a bit before answering the question, "Where are you from?" How do we answer this simple question while accounting for all the twists and turns and layers of experience that make up our identity? How deep do our roots need to go before we can claim to be Amish or Mennonite--or any other particular cultural identity? To help make sense of the patchwork of our lives, we turn to three different ways to understand cultural dynamics and to discuss why we can expect that any two individuals in the same culture will have significantly different experiences.
Resources mentioned in the show:
Gerald J. Mast, PhD (website and links to writings)
Amish and Mennonite Separations and Mergers (Dwight Gingerich Blog)
Intercultural Communication by Kathryn Sorrells (2020, SAGE Publications)
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This is.
Speaker 2:Rebecca, and this is Naomi. We're 40-something moms and first cousins who know what it's like to veer off the path assigned to us.
Speaker 1:We've juggled motherhood, marriage, college and career, as we've questioned our faith traditions while exploring new identities and ways of seeing the world.
Speaker 2:Without any maps for either of us to follow. We've had to figure things out as we go and appreciate that detours and dead ends are essential to the path Along the way, we've uncovered a few insights we want to share with fellow travelers.
Speaker 1:We want to talk about the questions we didn't know who to ask and the options we didn't know we had.
Speaker 2:So whether you're feeling stuck or already shaking things up, we are here to cheer you on and assure you that the best is yet to come. Welcome to Uncovered Life Beyond. Hello everyone, Welcome back to Uncovered Life Beyond. This is Naomi.
Speaker 3:And this is Rebecca. We are so excited to be back again today. You know, I think I always say I'm excited to be back, so every week it seems like we have the best topic.
Speaker 2:Right, it's funny how we don't run out of topics In fact, we think of more topics than we'll ever have time for but it's fun to talk about them.
Speaker 3:It is. It is. So today we're going to be talking about a question that has been both in my brain a lot, something I've been thinking about, but also something that has been posed to me. I've been asked this question and the more I think about it, the more I believe it is probably something we all to some level identify with, probably some more than others. But the question is what am I? Was I Amish? Was I Mennonite? Was I neither? Was I something in between? And what's the difference?
Speaker 2:When I think about your life story. You've been in a number of different church settings, ranging from Amish, mennonite to Mennonite, and so you could either see that as diluting the purity of your identity, or we could see that as giving you a perspective to compare them Right.
Speaker 3:And maybe it's both. So in my religious experience, I was part of, I believe, eight different Amish Mennonite to Mennonite church communities. My maternal grandparents were Amish until they died and I joke that my mom was Amish until she met my dad and the Lord and at that point they joined a very conservative beachy church. The church leaders and probably all the church members had literally just stepped out of the Amish church. So many of the practices, many of the ways they thought about faith and life was based from the Amish experience. We just drove cars now.
Speaker 2:I wasn't a part of as many different churches as you were, but, like yours, my mother was raised Amish and so I had family members that we would go visit. We would go to church with them and hear the Amish preaching and Amish singing. We'd go to Amish weddings and funerals and all of that. But then my mom and dad were both Beachy Amish when they met and then we attended the same church that my dad's family was at until I was 18 or 19. Our time in the same church overlapped there during that time period and then my family moved to Western Oklahoma and I was a part of a Beachy Amish Mennonite church there for a couple of years before I left the tradition altogether. So I was a part of fewer communities but I was exposed to them. I knew them. My mom and dad were both involved in prison ministries and would volunteer with folks from other Mennonite churches in the area. So there was a lot of interaction, but I wasn't a part of those churches.
Speaker 3:Well, right, and we would have even gone to school with-. Oh, that's right, a blend from Joe Wenger kids to the Beachy kids to-.
Speaker 2:New Order New.
Speaker 3:Order to Mennonites.
Speaker 3:So there was a mixture in that church school Right, so there was a mixture in that church school Right the funny part was from the church in Virginia. When we went to Paraguay we were now in a entirely new culture and an entirely new world. But again we had all for the most part we had left the Amish churches within the last several years. So even in this new country we still took a bulk of our past with us and I kind of wonder how much we influenced our native converts with our Amish traditions.
Speaker 2:Wasn't that the whole point of the mission, though?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, which is actually something I think about a lot. Yes, but yes, you're right. So all of this in and out, which was very fascinating for me, was also confusing. This can and did lead to uncertainty about what label to claim. I was never quite sure exactly what we were In fact. At one point, if someone would have suggested that I had an Amish background, I would have almost been offended. Had an Amish background, I would have almost been offended, right.
Speaker 2:Isn't that weird. Growing up, I remember being in the way when my dad would say we were Amish, mennonite, because I didn't want to associate with the conservatism of Amish. It's like so uncool. Yes, mennonite, very cool.
Speaker 3:Right, right. I would also like to point out the skill to know how to blend in and interact with extended family who has the very conservative, the Amish background, when you're one of the more liberal ones is also quite fascinating to think about.
Speaker 2:Because there are some rules that you're not expected to keep and some rules you are. And as a non-member, I remember going to funerals of Amish relatives. You know I saw myself as more different than similar right and in fact I remember wearing. It was a coat with faux fur. I didn't think anything of it. It was, you know, either dark, brown or black. You know it was not fancy at all, but that was something that the Amish kids there didn't have. And you know I walked by a kid at one point. The kid, like reached out and touched the coat. It kind of blew my mind in the moment because that was a difference I wasn't conscious of until then.
Speaker 3:Right, and you learn how to pay attention to suspenders, or the lack thereof, buttons or a zipper.
Speaker 3:Or the neckline, the shape of the neckline, the length of the sleeves, the puffiness of the sleeve that's right, yeah Whether the covering strings are tied or untied, and when they're tied or untied Exactly. And we had all kinds of rules that would change but were very important when they existed, regarding what clothing we were allowed to wear and what color clothing we were allowed to wear to certain family events. So there was this whole. There was this whole Agglomeration, yeah, of rules and of actions, and in hindsight I wonder sometimes if it was more important to possibly my parents than it was actually to my extended relatives.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot of sense to me, because in that setting, a child's behavior reflects on the parents in a huge way, and if a child does something that's deemed inappropriate, the shame goes to the parent as much as to the child, and it's seen as a failure on the parent's part and it's seen as a failure on the parents' part Also. For someone who hasn't experienced that conglomeration of rules, it might sound like it's really confusing, and I guess it is, if you try to think about it logically. But in the moment, the real issue has to do with not giving offense. The real issue has to do with showing deference to the more conservative family members, not offending them. And so you adjust your behavior, you adjust your wardrobe to not give offense to whoever is most likely to be offended. Yeah, exactly, and that's what it really boils down to.
Speaker 3:So one day I had this little crisis. I realized I kind of felt like an outsider, no matter where I went, and I realized how often my identity had been in question. And again, I am doubtful that this is unique to me, necessarily. I think many of us have this experience at some point. But between professors and some friends I use that term loosely I had been challenged as to what my identity actually was. And then it made me wonder well, am I Amish enough to talk about things like educational neglect? Am I Amish enough to be talking about young girls who are taken out of school to work for those low wage jobs for the wealthy business owner or sometimes for their family, for free? I don't know. Am I Amish enough to talk about Amish themed romance novels? And I felt like at some point I was Amish enough to bear the consequences, but not Amish enough to hold the title.
Speaker 2:Not Amish enough to talk about the pain of those consequences and the limitations they put on your life.
Speaker 3:Right. But then the next question is so what credentials would make me Amish enough to critique those aspects of the culture? Because, funny enough, it's also due to my Amish background that I don't have those credentials to be taken seriously. And I know there's other faith communities who have educational neglect. There are other faith communities whose girls work way too young, way too cheaply, but mine, ours, was a direct response from the Amish.
Speaker 2:It was an extension of the Amish influence.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. Yes, it was directly from that Amish influence. So I reached out, had a crisis moment. We all need friends like my friend, gerald Mass. So Gerald Mass is a professor of communications at Bluffton College and he is also a wealth of information when it comes to Anabaptist history. He is one of the most thoughtful, kind but knowledgeable people I know. And I also find Gerald fascinating because he would have grown up in the Amish Mennonite world but now also is a part of the General Mennonite Conference.
Speaker 2:So that's a more progressive one, right, correct?
Speaker 3:And that conference would not have the Amish lineage in fluid. Yes, yes. So I reached out to Gerald and simply asked who am I, what am I? And he wrote me a paragraph that probably changed the way I will think about my history forever, and it finally made sense in my brain. And he wrote okay, let's try this, think of Menno Simons. And, by the way, menno Simons is kind of the forefather of Anabaptist faith.
Speaker 2:Menno Simons wasn't one of the founders but he came along a little bit later in the 1500s and because he was a former Catholic priest he had the education and the kind of the training, theological training to formalize a lot of those Anabaptist beliefs.
Speaker 3:And kind of give it power.
Speaker 2:Yes, like he gave a voice to it. Yes, gave it cohesion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so Gerald wrote. Okay, let's try this. Think of Menno Simons as the Martin Luther of non-Hutterite Anabaptism the Martin Luther of non-Hutterite Anabaptism. There are more editions of his writings in more languages than any other early Anabaptist. There are probably more copies of Menno Simon's writings in Amish homes right now than in Mennonite homes. Jacob Amon and Jacob Amon for our dear listeners, was the man who broke away from the Mennonite churches and started the Amish faith practice. So Jacob Amen has a few letters in a collection that is sometimes circulated as letters of the Amish division. For the few people who are interested in esoteric corners of Anabaptist history, there's nothing remotely like Menno in this little collection of letters. Both the Amish publisher Pathway and the Mennonite publisher Herald Press currently have the collected works of Menno Simons in print, slightly different editions. The Amish probably follow Menno Simons more closely than Mennonites do, because Menno was an advocate for a strong ban and shunning and his ideas shape the door track confession that the Amish still use as their confession of faith.
Speaker 2:I think that's what we used when I was in instruction class too in our Amish Mennonite church.
Speaker 3:I bet you did, I bet you did, I bet you did. Yeah, gerald continues to say. I might go so far as to say that Jacob Amon was really just trying to get his Swiss friends to adopt more of Menno's platform. We could say in this way that the Amish are more Mennonite than most Mennonites.
Speaker 2:Whoa, it's even messier than we realized.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so when I think of the whole Amish, mennonite, mennonite, conservative Anabaptist tree, it is just messy branches that go every single direction.
Speaker 2:When we were talking about this initially I had to think of a timeline that maps out all those branches and divisions within Anabaptist communities over the last couple hundred years, and I found it on Dwight Gingrich's blog, which shout out to Zanya Dwight's wife, who I knew at Calvary Bible School years and years ago.
Speaker 2:This timeline that I found on Dwight's blog shows how Mennonite and Amish groups have branched off each other and how their history is not this linear progression of always becoming more progressive or always becoming, you know, more moderate. There's a really simplistic idea out there that, oh, the Amish are the originals, the Mennonites are adaptations of the older, more pure Amish tradition and, you know, everyone else is just gradually adjusting to broader society and even within, even within conservative communities. That's a very common assumption. It's I'm not saying it's taught very common to hear warnings about how, you know, every, if every generation becomes more liberal, in no time at all there'll be no difference between us and the world. And yet, when we look at this timeline, the reality is some groups are becoming more conservative, some are becoming less, so some of them split and then come back together. There is just, there's just. It's so much messier, so much more complicated than most of us have any awareness of.
Speaker 3:I think it's also fascinating that the Anabaptist movement was birthed out of a defiance to the Catholic church structures and the Anabaptist movement specifically did not want a headquarters or someone who was in charge.
Speaker 2:Like a central authority.
Speaker 3:Correct. So plus plus. I mean this is our background, so I think it's okay to say this no one's quite as stubborn as a good batch of Germans. I mean, we Germans tend to be stubborn, we tend to be inventive, and I sometimes think it's reflected in that whole structure because very few people will openly trust other people. So it's this small group of people following maybe one or two leaders, but then you have a leader rise up in that who will often decide well, it should actually be this way, and break away from that and form his light. Slightly different church, literally. In Holmes County we had a church who separated over whether or not to have screen in their windows.
Speaker 2:Wow. I think another thing that contributes to this tendency is the idea that because we don't need a mediary between well, I was going to say people and God, but traditionally they would say man and God, and yes, that's how it was practiced, so I will use that patriarchal language. Because of that, then if God is speaking to everyone, or at least if you're a man, then there's nothing to stop an individual from deciding to split off and start up some other church or just, you know, split off and do something the right way. That tendency is kind of built into the system, and I mean we also see this in evangelical fundamentalism. Right, and I think there's that sense of because I can hear from God directly. Therefore, that opens the door to branching off and starting my own thing.
Speaker 3:And I think that's a really important point. So the church my parents were a part of when they first got married was literally one step away from the Amish and they made that change. This group left the Amish church because they had finally found assurance of salvation. My parents' church didn't just have the hope of salvation like their parents spoke about. They had the absolute assurance of salvation and were now concerned about the salvation of their Amish relatives. I mean, I remember being a kid trying to make this make sense and I was fearful that some of my Amish relatives would end up in hell, that some of my Amish relatives would end up in hell, and I didn't know how to make sense of it. And I would like to point out, the older I get, the more I believe that maybe the Amish have something when they talk about the hope of salvation.
Speaker 2:There's a humility in that, isn't it? There's a humility in that, isn't it? And my expectation is that that theological shift was in large part because of evangelical fundamentalist influence on your parents' and my parents as well. Right, I would guess you're right.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And interestingly enough. The other thing I would like to point out is it wasn't those who are still Amish saying that I didn't belong or that I wasn't Amish enough. I've never heard that from someone who is in the Amish culture. It was those who were trying to establish their superior knowledge, their expertise, on Amish culture, and they were all from outside the community.
Speaker 2:It sounds like you're dealing with people who have a very simplistic view of culture. You either are or are not a part of a culture and are looking for a pure experience, right right, a pure experience. That doesn't exist, I would argue.
Speaker 3:And I realized that while I understand the language, the culture, most of the nuances of the community, I would never consider myself an expert. Yet many of those who don't understand any of that declare to me that they are in fact the experts, and that thought made me feel at first a bit gaslit, but then it also allowed me to let them go and understand what was happening.
Speaker 2:You were really talking about two different things, or maybe talking on two different wavelengths.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Well, like I mentioned earlier, I think it's interesting to, instead of seeing your experience as less quote, unquote, pure and therefore less authentic and less valid, I think it's interesting to think about how your unique set of experiences and your exposure to a variety of different church groups can actually highlight what is distinctive about those individual groups, and you and I were talking about this, and we were talking about what were the cultural differences between the Beachy Amish Mennonite congregation that we both attended as children. When we compared it to the Mennonite church that you later attended. I should also say that the school we attended was attended by children from both these congregations, as well as New Order Amish children, as well as children from a number of other Amish and Mennonite groups in the area, and so we both have this sense that the cultures of the two congregations were different, but it was kind of hard to put our finger on what it was and actually put words to it. What was your experience?
Speaker 3:Because you were really the one who experienced membership in both of those worlds. You know you're right. It was interesting how difficult it was to put words to this. The first thing I thought about was the language, and I don't think we think about how much language shapes the way we navigate the world and the way we experience the world. It shapes the way we think about the world.
Speaker 2:I just want to co-sign that 100%. As someone who studies rhetoric and argumentation, I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 3:Well, there's words in Pennsylvania Dutch that you don't have English words for, there's English words that you don't have words in Pennsylvania Dutch for, and so there's this blending of it, and while language absolutely shapes the way we view the world, I think it's a good thing and something that we should embrace and be proud of, because I think sometimes we're too quick to shun people who speak differently from us, and I just want to make sure we're not doing that. The Beachy Amish Mennonite church we attended largely spoke Pennsylvania Dutch, not in the service, but after the service within our families socially.
Speaker 3:they spoke Pennsylvania Dutch. I don't know if 25% of the people at the Mennonite church would have understood Pennsylvania Dutch. So it was a big difference in language. So it was a big difference in language. Additionally, when you're raised a certain way, when you're raised Amish, it's going to change the way you experience life as a kid and your ideals and how you're going to raise your family. Primarily, at the Beachy Amish Mennonite Church, everyone had the Amish background. At the Mennonite Church there was this mix of Joe Wanger people and those who just had a long history of Mennonite background. Very few came from direct Amish and so, again, your culture was different. The value of education was different from the beachy Amish Mennonite church to the Mennonite church as well. The Mennonite church was much more likely to attend high school.
Speaker 2:Maybe we should also mention that, on the surface, an outsider would not have picked up on that many differences between these two churches. I mean, there were visible differences, but they were not dramatically different, and so what we're trying to identify are the cultural differences that we know are there but are largely unspoken.
Speaker 3:They're there, they're largely unspoken and it's varied Even from this specific comparison. Someone else's experience is going to be different Totally.
Speaker 2:And we're not saying that these things were either always present in one and not in the other. It's about degrees, it's that they were more likely to be present in one than the other, but not that they were necessarily completely absent or always present.
Speaker 3:At the Beachy Amish Mennonite Church there were far more community meals. There was more mutual aid like we had frolics.
Speaker 2:Frolics as we knew them growing up was a term that came from an Amish context and that wasn't exactly a barn raising, but it was more like a scaled down barn raising, I guess you could say. But it was where if someone was building a house or building a barn, everyone might have come together from the congregation, might have come together one day to help them build not in one day, they wouldn't build an entire house or barn in one day but it was a form of mutual aid of everyone pitching in when there was.
Speaker 3:Right, and I remember when there was cases of a storm went through and an elderly couple would have had a lot of damage in their yard. So it might even be as simple as doing yard work, but the church would have came together to do that.
Speaker 2:So there was more of that kind of thing in an Amish context or in a context that had more of an Amish influence. Yeah, correct.
Speaker 3:The other thing I observed in differences was I felt like there was a lot more emphasis and even pride on family lineage in your beachy Amish Mennonite church compared to any of the conservative Anabaptist or Mennonite churches I attended, which I find interesting and I can't put my finger really on why it was that way, because the Mennonite game is a thing, right.
Speaker 2:I think again it's about degree of emphasis and I think in an Amish context or a more Amish context, discussing Freundschaft was like a go-to topic, where in a Mennonite context it's going to come up probably, but it's probably not a go-to topic of conversation to the same degree it would be in an Amish context.
Speaker 3:You know that's a good point. And also, like in your Amish churches, you file in by age, starting with the eldest. So the oldest man in the congregation files in first, and I think they eat in that same order.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot more kind of implicit hierarchy. Yeah, yeah, and it's implicit. And I think that's what's so important here and this is also why it's so so difficult for anyone to join the Amish culture is that so much of it is implicit, where I would think that in most Mennonite settings its expectations are going to be more explicit, which would make it easier for an outsider to join. Yeah, relatively, it's all relative, it's not definite.
Speaker 3:But the closer you are to an Amish community, the more you're going to know who is your age and who's not your age, the more you're going to know who is your grandpa's age and who's five years younger, like you know that, and it matters. Yeah, and it matters, yeah, and it matters yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and along with that emphasis on family lineage, would you also agree that there's more of an emphasis on the Anabaptist tradition, more identification with Anabaptist martyrdom in a more Amish-influenced congregation?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I am trying to remember if I remember any of those conversations in the Mennonite churches I was a part of. If there were references made to it, it was in passing and it was really brief.
Speaker 2:And maybe there was more of a focus on evangelical flavored topics apocalypse, right End times, those kinds of things, Right.
Speaker 3:Right, and I think your Mennonite groups, again based on my observation, are going to be more apt to worry about end times, doomsday. All that compared to your Amish group, and I think it's probably a mixture of the evangelical flavored focus but also the fact that traditionally the Amish people are going to be more self-sufficient and you know, if the whole world goes sideways, hey, they still have their garden and their cows and a couple chickens. They're going to be fine.
Speaker 2:During the pandemic, especially these small Amish communities in rural Iowa, for example, were probably the least impacted by the pandemic Right.
Speaker 3:And I think in some ways that's changing.
Speaker 2:Especially in a community like the one you're in right now.
Speaker 3:Right, that's absolutely changing and I think in the next 10 years we're going to see even more of a change there. But traditionally this would have been true from my perspective.
Speaker 2:Would you say that in a church that had more Amish influence, the assumption was that all the women were gardening, the assumption was that all the women were sewing their own clothing, et cetera, et cetera. Where in the Mennonite church, it was less of an assumption. It was still common, but less of an assumption that this was your default.
Speaker 3:Right, I mean, in a Mennonite church. You're not going to go up and ask somebody if they were caning tomatoes this week, right, right. The assumption isn't necessarily that everyone's going to be doing that Right when in your beachy Amish Mennonite churches, absolutely, yeah, yeah. The other thing that I think is so fascinating is conversations in the practice of excommunication and proving membership, and which that's like a probationary, like it's kind of equivalent to a probationary membership.
Speaker 3:Correct. But also, before you can become a church member in the Beachy Amish Mennonite churches, you're put on a proving, on a six month proving before they accept you as a member, right, right. Then if you do something naughty, you will be put on a six monthmonth proving thing where you can't vote, you can't participate in communion and it's basically six months for you to get your act together. I don't remember ever witnessing that in your Mennonite churches. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I don't think I experienced that. Your beachy Amish Mennonite churches are much more likely to be involved in the private matters of their members' lives. I mean, like from finances, and I don't know that that's always a good thing to relationships, to marriage relationships and even just a closer surveillance of private lives. Like I know a preacher who absolutely would pop in on somebody to check in whether or not this person was wearing a t-shirt while he did his chores instead of a button-down shirt.
Speaker 2:Because the t-shirt was for Bolton he was supposed to be. According to the church practice, he was supposed to be wearing a button-down shirt.
Speaker 3:Yes, and it wasn't entirely uncommon for someone if they were on proving someone, if they were on proving or if they were on the radar of breaking too many rules to have preachers just pop in on him. It was like we've got our eyes on you, buddy. And again, that was not something I would have experienced in Mennonite churches. If you broke the rules in a public setting, you might be called on it, but they weren't involving themselves in your private life to assure that you weren't breaking church standards. Does that make sense? Agreed.
Speaker 2:Agreed, yes, yes. I think that distinction there is so interesting because it's not that Mennonite churches don't have any control over their members' lives, it's not that they are all free to do, free to be you and me, but it's different. It's just exercised in a different way, right yeah, or spoken of in a different way.
Speaker 3:Would it be fair to say the language of control is different? I think so. To say the language of control is different? I think so. I think the language of control is different both in church settings but also within family settings, and I'm glad that this isn't as much of a thing now as it was longer ago. But longer ago it was normal for Amish families to disinherit their children, and when that happened to me, it took me a long time to understand that my Mennonite friends had no idea what disinherited meant. And for those of you who are curious, it's the same thing as disowning. Basically, the parent will write you out of the will, which is a big deal.
Speaker 2:As much for the symbolic value as for whether or not there's going to be that much wealth to pass down.
Speaker 3:Right, and I think it comes from the Bible verse of lo I have given you an inheritance. Doesn't it come from that, or is that just something I've always assumed?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think it's a way for a parent of an adult child to express their disapproval of adult child's decisions.
Speaker 3:Right and, to be clear, that also happens in the Mennonite world Right. The language is just different and they probably wouldn't disinherit or disown.
Speaker 2:That would actually be kind of frowned upon, it's less likely, but there would that disapproval would still be expressed in some way, right?
Speaker 3:Right, and that the disapproval would be expressed and even the way to control your kids would be there. It would just be different different.
Speaker 2:You know, this discussion reminds me of Catherine Sorrell's book. It's actually a textbook on intercultural communication. In the first chapter she talks about different definitions of culture, and I think for a conversation like this one it can be helpful to use something like this to kind of figure out oh, what are we talking about when we're talking about these cultural differences? And she gives three definitions of culture. The first one is an anthropological definition of culture as a shared system of meaning.
Speaker 2:Communication is a process of transmitting and sharing information among a group of people.
Speaker 2:In this case, communication enables culture to be co-constructed and mutually shared by members of a group, and I think that's kind of our traditional sense of what we mean when we talk about a culture.
Speaker 2:It's that the sense of a shared system of meaning, especially when we're trying to figure out if someone is Amish or not, mennonite or not, in or out, which group they get labeled with. It's very much the anthropological definition definition. Now another definition is a cultural studies definition, where culture is understood as a contested site of meaning, and in this way some views are privileged and normalized, while other perspectives are marginalized or silenced. And so there's this jockeying for position that really makes a culture, a culture right. So it's this dynamic movement With this understanding of culture. Then communication is a process of negotiating, a struggle for power and visibility, rather than a mutual construction and sharing of meaning. And I think this is really what we're talking about when we're talking about tension between different identities, or a tension between how much awareness we have of our Anabaptist history, how much focus is going to be on one aspect of the culture versus another.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I read that and I was like, oh, that's a big one.
Speaker 2:Right, and it also explains why some folks like the ones you were talking about. It also explains why some people really see this as a hill to die on. Yeah Right, and I think this critical studies definition is really a reaction to the anthropological definition. It's still assuming that a particular culture can be defined and nailed down and it can be seen as a concrete, specific thing, but the question is, who gets to determine what that is? Now, the third definition here is a globalization definition, which I don't quite follow. Why the word globalization is used here? I understand it's in the context of a globalized world where there's a lot of interaction between cultures. Still, I personally would have chosen something else for this definition, but it's in this globalization definition.
Speaker 2:Culture is viewed as a resource. In this case, communication can be viewed as a productive process. So, as in, we use our words to create meaning and people leverage culture. With this definition, people are seen as leveraging culture to build collective identities and exploit or mobilize for personal, economic or political gain.
Speaker 2:Communication is a process of using cultural resources, and so what I like about this definition is that it gets us out of the rut of arguing about the definition of what it means to be Amish or Mennonite. It gets us out of that quagmire of what am I right? And instead it recognizes hey, we are all a conglomeration of experiences. Because the reality is that even two people who were both raised Amish are going to experience it differently based on where they are positioned within society. If you are the youngest of a large family, your experience is going to be so much different than the oldest. If you're a man, if you're a woman, if you are, whatever you identify as, your experience is going to be different. And in that way, someone might, on the surface, appear to have the same cultural identity and they might have a lot of shared experiences, but their experience from within the culture is so different you can't equate the two and just lump them together.
Speaker 3:Would it be fair to say that this globalization definition is also kind of part of how we view terms like frolic or words that create that sense of community?
Speaker 2:Yes. So let's say, for example, that in my family of origin maybe there's a family friend or someone who needs some help. If my mom or my dad say something, hey, we should organize a frolic. We all know what that means and there is a sense that, oh, this is a community, this is a community coming together to give some kind of mutual aid, and that's a beautiful thing. I mean that mutual aid, that sense of being there for each other, is a beautiful thing. And so, even if we're using that terminology outside of an Amish environment, we are using that idea of mutual aid as a resource.
Speaker 3:And the sense of networks that are within the community is powerful, and I would argue that those networks are much stronger within your Amish circles than they are within your Mennonite circles as well.
Speaker 2:Typically, yes, yes, when I think of our difficulty in integrating these differences within a culture and also differences outside of a culture, I have to wonder if our hang-ups about these differences has any relationship to the rigid belief systems many of us were raised in, and I'm thinking here of belief systems that are common in Amish, mennonite communities, as well as conservative Christian, evangelical, fundamentalist, and the list could go on congregations where a rigid belief system was really seen as a mark of devotion to God.
Speaker 3:Right. It was like we needed those established hierarchies to let us know who is legitimate or not, who has a right to speak, who needs to stay silent. And one of the most popular features of Christian culture, it seems, is thinking you know, we're right and they're wrong, and that means we're going to heaven, they're going to hell. It's this language of who's in and who's out, the language of spiritual warfare, tells us that there's like no in between, as does the political discourse around so many political issues right now.
Speaker 2:And if we have this rigid belief system, then when we do make a major change, as most of us end up doing in some way, we then can feel obligated to prove that God is behind this change. We are still on God's side. And the problem with this is then there's only one label left for everyone who sees it differently than I do, anyone who disagrees with me. And in the field of psychology, this move, this habit of mind, is called splitting, and it's a defense mechanism that rigidly breaks things down into one of two categories, and we can see it in the way we're talking about it now. But even when we're just thinking about how the day went or thinking about ourselves, I always mess things up, or someone is always this way or never does that. It's a defense mechanism and it's very toxic, because life just isn't that black and white, and it really inhibits us from getting curious about those changes, or maybe the changes others make. It prompts us to see difference as a threat rather than to be interested and curious and learn about it.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 3:So when we or if we do move outside of a particular cultural or social context, we end up still thinking this way because that's what we were trained to do, and so it throws us back into those old, familiar patterns and some other ways that I think these cultural habits of mind, like splitting, can trip us up long after leaving is well.
Speaker 3:First of all, we can be totally oblivious and unaware of their presence, or we can know they're there but we're embarrassed by them and we don't know how to address it. We can also feel that our connection or membership to the culture is being threatened or questioned. And, by the way, I think this is why the whole disinheriting, the whole church ban, the whole discipline, the whole excommunication process is so effective. Our nervous system literally reads it as a threat to our very survival. And then what's really hard is significant details about our life isn't fully appreciated or understood by people outside of the culture when we do leave, because they have no frame of reference for it. But yet we're not part of that culture we came from, where our reference is understood or our experience is understood.
Speaker 2:Which can really make us feel alone.
Speaker 3:Alone, and also that we're being punished by God because it's hard and it's difficult and it's lonely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a lonely place to be stuck, and I wonder if letting go of the struggle to label ourselves with one particular identity is one way to get unstuck from this place and really help us connect with others. I think of a metaphor of a patchwork quilt, and those of us who were raised under an Amish influence, and maybe even a Mennonite one, are familiar with this concept of a quilt. And a patchwork quilt is made up of a unique blend of fabrics. A patchwork quilt is made up of what you already have on hand. There's no two that are the same, and if you're making a quilt, that is all you know, a work of art, you know a very one of those really expensive ones that they sell at benefit auctions, of a kind that gets passed down generations. Right, those are very carefully planned and crafted and only certain colors.
Speaker 2:The design is very intentional and there's a lot that excluded.
Speaker 2:Things that don't fit get excluded. But a patchwork quilt is you're just working with what you've got, but you can choose placement, you can choose how to piece the different parts together in a way to make a new whole, and I think, in the same way, we don't get to choose the experiences that we have in our lives, but we do get to choose how to make meaning of them, how to see them in relation to each other, and we can do that in a way that appreciates all the messiness, all the randomness, and still see it as coming together to make something that's its own kind of beauty. So that you know if, instead of making the fabric swatches of our lives, those all those different parts of our lives, try to fit somebody else's design, we can see all those different influences, those different experiences, those different perspectives that we've gathered over our lives as resources that we can draw on, depending on the situation that we find ourselves in, and it gives us a wealth of experience to draw on, rather than a watered down experience.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I love this analogy so much because it's so very true. However, I also want to point out that it is true that people have taken advantage of different labels. People have taken advantage of the Amish name. Locally, there is a store and the name of the store is Amish Cotton, and I cringe every time I go by it.
Speaker 2:It's like they have a big sign saying outsider yeah, they may.
Speaker 3:as well, I don't understand it. And there are people who do take advantage of labels. So I think and I know you agree with me this is not us trying to say eh, use whatever label you want.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no, absolutely not at all.
Speaker 3:But this is saying honor the pieces of your life and you get to decide what your quilt looks like. You even get to decide what pieces you're going to include in your quilt, and I think it deserves respect. I think it deserves respect, I think it deserves love and I think it also deserves letting people who dismiss that, just let them go Right.
Speaker 2:And I think it helps relieve the expectation that for us to be in community with each other, we have to all have the same quilt pattern, right? But instead it's recognizing oh, we might have patches that are the same, but if your patches you know, if we have the same patch but yours is alongside a different color, it's going to have a different look than mine, which is juxtaposed differently. Even when we do have what appears to be the same experience, in the context of the rest of our lives, it might play a very different role. And I think when we think of it as a patchwork, you're right it's not about saying, oh, I can be whatever I want to be. It's about saying here is my life and owning it and making the meaning of it. That gives your life purpose.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I hope you invite me to your next Quilting Bee. I'd like to sign up for that.
Speaker 2:I can't wait to see you there, and I'll be sure to bring even more cheese and.
Speaker 3:I'll bring wine to go along with it. How does that sound?
Speaker 2:Sounds great. See you there. See ya.
Speaker 1:Thank you for spending time with us today. The resources and materials we've mentioned are linked in the show notes and on Facebook at Uncovered Life Beyond what?
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