Herculean effort (2)

Posted on by
Reply

If memory is the problem — carrying on from yesterday’s post — it may be the solution as well — the solution, I mean, to the dis-ease with the changes in our lives and their new temptations.

(I’m setting aside — for now, to focus on now — speculations about how younger and future generations may adapt, how “singlemindedness,” as Alan Jacobs puts it, will test and/or play out for them…)

The path I see may or may not be herculean, but is certainly connected to memory. It’s the path of sabbath-keeping. Nothing particularly original about this; it’s also a current conversation. (See, for example, this at Rumblings.) But it makes sense. Taking sabbath breaks, weekly or in bigger chunks in occasional “sabbaticals,” may be motivated for some of us by memory of pre-internet days, but these will then produce fresh memories of the experience of freedom.

How sabbath-keeping in relation to internet technologies might unfold in practice will surely vary from person to person. I’ve been inspired in my own (fumbling) attempts at it by Marva J. Dawn’s Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: ceasing, resting, embracing, feasting. (I come at sabbath from a spiritual perspective, but the work-rest rhythm is important, I think, whether a person is religious or not.)

It seems significant to me that the command about the sabbath is the only one of the ten with “remember” in it. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy… We take a break, shut down, turn off, read and connect in other ways, rest.

The space in which we turned out backs on strivings technological and internet-driven will be unique. We’ll remember the day, be strengthened to come back to that place again.

In the renewed practice of an old-fashioned habit like sabbath, we may be able to keep the memory of a kind of singlemindedness alive.

Herculean effort (1)

Posted on by
2

I was struck by the phrase “herculean amount of self-control” in reference to what it takes to live and work the way we used to before the internet. It’s over at Alan Jacobs’ blog, Text Patterns, which considers “technologies of reading, writing, research, and knowledge.” The specific context of the phrase (which is found in the comments) is a personal reflection from Jacobs’ friend who’s taking a sabbatical from blogging. This allowed him to sink into reading for an extended time, to give himself over to it, all of which, he says, had become rare in his life.

Conversations like this are ubiquitous in our culture. We’re aware that things have changed, and how drastically — in the way we read, in the way we pay (or don’t pay) attention. It worries us, of course.

It seems to me that the notion that self-control in these matters is both necessary and good (Hercules being a hero, after all) is largely motivated by memory. Isn’t it? It’s those of us who have lived long enough to remember what it’s like to be absorbed in a book at length, to work with singular focus, to not be restless over essentially minuscule concerns such as whether there’s a new message or tweet or status line to read, who try to fight back.

The change is real, and so are the memories. The effort to return is therefore herculean. Confession: I know the siren call of  “is there something new?” The aimless wandering and clicking to seek it. It’s like a nervous tic. I also remember yesteryear’s rituals of once-a-day mail delivery, the once-a-day newspaper, the expectation that if I need to be interrupted, the telephone will ring. I know the difference between those habits, those interruptions, and this compulsive distraction. Or, at least, the temptation to distraction. It annoys me that barely ten or fifteen minutes into reading a wonderful book I’m getting itchy to check something on the computer, to move my mouse over the desk to bring the screen to life, to click on something. It annoys me that resisting this (because there’s nothing I need, really need, there at the moment) is such hard work.

But maybe, as I said, it’s the memory that’s the problem and when old ways are forgotten, the discomfort will disappear as well. Perhaps subsequent generations, those who grow up with these new habits, will adapt just fine. They’ll be what they’re accustomed to being. They won’t need to expend effort in something they didn’t know, and thus don’t remember, any more than we expend effort in reading scrolls instead of books or staging family dramas in our houses instead of turning on the television.

More tomorrow….

A 15th birthday celebration

Posted on by
6

Yesterday, our congregation celebrated its 15th birthday.

Granted, fifteen years isn’t really that long in terms of most church or even congregational histories. There are a few factors in our case, however, that make this both unique and significant.

Jubilee website photo

Jubilee Mennonite Church represents the coming together of two congregations with their own particular earlier histories (dreams, successes, struggles) which extends the story back a couple of decades. To make these individual long stories short, the one group (Northdale Mennonite) had a building but for various reasons had seriously declined in membership. The other group (Valley Gardens Community Church — MB) had people, including a lot of children and youth, but had been meeting in a school and longed for a place to call home. (Although this group had purchased land, it began to doubt the wisdom of mortgaging the future to an expensive new building.) A casual conversation between friends from the two congregations over an evening bonfire resulted in the beginning of talks, and eventually the chartering of a new entity with 77 members in 1995.

The merger was described yesterday as “a marriage of convenience,” and in many respects it was. It solved the problems of two groups, and produced something stronger than either of them alone could become, something viable for the future.

But the phrase hides how carefully both congregations approached the merger, for there was another factor in all this that needed study and honest conversation. The two “courting” congregations happened to be from different Mennonite denominations — the Mennonite Brethren (MBs) and Mennonite Church Canada (formerly known as the General Conference Mennonites or GCs). We were the first, and are still, as far as I know, the only “dual conference” church of these two groups in the province, and I don’t think there’s more than two or three in the country.

To the casual eye, this may appear unremarkable. Isn’t a Mennonite a Mennonite a Mennonite? Yes, in a way, but like many broad movements of faith, the Anabaptists too splintered and then splintered some more. At the founding of the Mennonite Brethren in 1860 in Russia, and hence separation of the two streams that our two founding congregations represent, relations were anything but cordial. (I realize I’m over-simplifying things a little, as the General Conference, now called Mennonite Church, was founded in the U.S., also in 1860, but because it was this conference that many of the Russian Mennonite immigrants from the main Russian Mennonite church joined when they came to Canada, differences originating in Russia were brought along to the New World, and perpetuated in further ways.) Alike as they may have been at the root, each group developed its own culture over time, not to mention negative stereotypes of one another.

These separated groups were now contemplating becoming a congregation that would choose to be not one or the other, but both. We set up various task forces to look at our confessional statements, polity, and so on. We consulted with conference leaders and asked the advice of ministers from each conference who had worked in churches belonging to the other. I recall some resistance at the national level of the MB conference, but since it was provincial jurisdiction to accept new churches and provincially, both denominations, were supportive, our proposal to merge won approval.

I’m glad it happened. The dual part of it is important, both symbolically and for the resources we have at our disposal, but more so the life we’ve shared and shaped together for 15 years. The fact is, denominational identity doesn’t seem to be a huge deal for the younger generation anyway. We’re still a relatively small church, in the 130-person range, and we’ve had our share of ups and downs as I suppose any congregation does, but I was reminded again yesterday of how much we’ve learned together, perhaps from the blending of our respective traditions, but more often just in the simple process of being church together.

I appreciated too the reminder of our pastor Dan Nighswander in his sermon on Hebrews 12:1,2 and 12-17 and its instruction to keep our focus on Jesus. (This was one thing the Anabaptist reformers got right, he said, this insistence on the centrality of Jesus — an emphasis, he went on, that is proving especially relevant for the church in a post-Christendom world.) Such a focus will shape our identity (for primarily it must be that we’re a group of people following Jesus together), our character, and our relationship with God.

There was a great spirit of celebration yesterday, in the service and the lunch that followed. Happy birthday, Jubilee!