What If ??

Our oldest grandchild is graduating from high school in June. Ben's life in the outside world is just beginning as mine is diminishing. I have so much life experience and he has so little. I wonder what I can tell him. He hasn't asked me very much about my life. Later, when he is older, and I am no longer here, he will wonder about it and wish he had asked me more questions. Maybe he will read my blog posts and find some answers there.
Or he might read my memoir (I have so far only written an introduction and am having a hard time going beyond that).

My Mom, Ben's great-grandmother, sharing some of her joy with Ben when he was two

My Dad, imparting some of his life wisdom to one of his grandchildren

Jason Mahn, Associate Professor of Religion and Director of the Presidential Center for Faith and Learning at Augustana College in Illinois, gave me some insight:

Educators are called to tell their own stories in ways that include regret, remorse, mourning, and roads not taken. Only then can we help our students navigate a world where multiple, conflicting callings will always shape them into the complex, vulnerable creatures they are.

Maybe that is why I'm not making progress on my memoir. Who wants to write about regrets, mourning, and roads not taken?! 
There is always the nagging question in the back of the mind: "What if?" . . . 

What if . . . someone had encouraged me to stick to the university entrance math course instead of choosing bookkeeping in grade 11 because I hated geometry . . . ? 

What if . . . that boy I had a crush on all through high school had actually had the same feeling for me, and not dated my best friend on grad night . . . ?

What if . . . I had done this, or chosen that, or listened to my heart instead of 
to my elders . . . ?

When I graduated from high school, I had two goals and both of them seemed impossible to reach at the time:

1)  I wanted to complete my education by going to university

2)  I wanted to get married

My Dad and I had a talk after graduation and he gave me some other ideas. I listened because I didn't know what else to do. The rest is history! I did achieve both goals I had set for myself, but in a different way than I anticipated, and that makes for an interesting life story (some of which I have shared in previous blog posts). 

What Thomas Merton (1915-1968) says in a prayer resonates with me. I have prayed this same prayer many times throughout my life:

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will 
does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that my desire to please you 
does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost

and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

My advice to my grandson at this significant time in his life is this:

A seed only flourishes by staying in the ground in which it is sown. When you keep digging the seed up to check whether it is growing, it will never bear fruit. Think of yourself as a little seed planted in rich soil. All you have to do is stay there and trust that the soil contains everything you need to grow. 
This growth takes place even when you do not feel it.
                                                                                                     (Henri J.M. Nouwen)

The Clock is Ticking

These days my maternal grandfather, Abram Kroeger, is on my mind. My mother lost her father in 1937, when she was 16, so I never met him. However, we have a few photos, and my mother has told me his story.

My grandfather came from a family of clockmakers who took their clockmaking business from West Prussia to Russia where they set up a clock-manufacturing business in the village of Rosenthal, Ukraine. This history is documented in a book entitled Kroeger Clocks, by Arthur Kroeger, which I featured in a blog post in July 2012. As the Mennonite population in tsarist Russia expanded rapidly, there was an increased demand for clocks.

Arthur Kroeger writes, "Traditionally, Mennonite clockmakers produced clocks by employing members of their own family. The older sons learned from their father, and the younger sons and female members contributed their skills by doing the painting and artwork on the clock dials. These clocks were beautiful works of art." (p.35)

Kroeger clock (1873), as depicted in Kroeger Clocks, p.157

Sons of clockmakers worked for their fathers until they were married. However, if a son married a farmer's daughter with land of her own, he usually left clockmaking and went into farming. That was the case in my great-grandfather's family: he had several daughters but only one son. My grandfather, as the only son, inherited the farm from his parents. 

My grandmother was proud to be married to a landowner, especially since her family of origin, with several sons, was landless and emigrated to Canada in the early 1920s.

However, owning land proved to be my grandfather's tragic demise. The eventual outcome of events after WW1 was not foreseen, since agriculture was flourishing and Russia had a robust economy and seemingly endless resources. All this came to a halt as the result of the Bolshevik takeover. (Kroeger Clocks, p.55)

The Kroeger family, still intact in 1934

The Kroeger family in 1936, just before their father disappeared 

(My mother's little brother, Gerhard, died in 1934 of dysentery [Rote Ruhr].)

It was shortly after the picture above was taken that one evening, just at bedtime, a black van (often referred to as "the Black Raven") appeared at my grandparents' home. My grandfather (the most peace-loving man) was accused of planting dynamite with the intention of blowing up a bridge. The police took him away and the family never saw him again. They accused him because they wanted to confiscate his land.

Years later, my mother's uncle from Russia visited my parents in Canada. He had been imprisoned with my grandfather but somehow managed to escape death. My uncle told my mother the last time he'd seen him, her father was in a cell just able to stand; he was being interrogated and beaten and his face was all bloody. When my mother heard this, she went into the bathroom, locked the door and wept.  

My grandfather is on my mind these days because of what I have heard on the radio and read in the Winnipeg Free Press lately. Below is a link to an article by Bill Redekop:

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/u-of-w-fellowship-will-help-fund-research-of-kgb-files-on-mennonites-who-vanished-during-stalins-ukraine-purges-475247193.html

In the article, Royden Loewen (chair in Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg) writes about "this dark and hidden chapter of Mennonite history." Apparently the KGB archives of those missing persons are now being made available to scholars by the Ukrainian government, "perhaps as a snub to Russia."

I ask myself if our family will ever find out exactly what happened to my grandfather. It would be good to have closure.

In light of what happened to my grandfather and to many other innocent victims like him, I would say that we need to be vigilant in order to safeguard our democracy. Recent news points to Russian involvement in the American election process as well as in other areas. Russia's leader is hungry for world control.

Below follows an article about Russian links to the NRA, "one of the most politically polarizing organizations in the U.S." and a key part of Trump's conservative base.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/01/590076949/depth-of-russian-politicians-cultivation-of-nra-ties-revealed?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180301

To my mind, this news of the bullying tactics of the NRA is somehow connected to what happened in Russia to my grandfather and many people like him, and it frightens me.

Could what happened to my grandfather happen here in North America? 

Perhaps it is already happening, and with great regularity!

To those families who recently lost their nearest and dearest in a place they thought was safe, does it matter who pulled the trigger? 

Reconciliation

Recently my husband Hardy and I attended an exhibit at the MHCGallery entitled Reconciliation through the Arts, showcasing the works of Indigenous artists as well as those from the Settler community within the broad theme of reconciliation. The purpose of the exhibition was to generate intercultural dialogue between Indigenous and Settler communities, exploring themes such as traditional life, treaty-making, residential schools, etc.

As I looked at the different exhibits, I stopped in front of a black and white painting of a nun writing on a blackboard. The only word on the blackboard was the word 'English.' It was written in cursive.

(Andrea Gallagher-Courteau)

I couldn't stop looking at that painting. I was mesmerized! It took me back, way back to my nine-and a-half-year-old bewildered self suddenly thrust into a world I didn't know or understand.

Our family arrived in Canada from Paraguay in the month of October and the oldest three children began school shortly thereafter. That first year we lived in the country and were within walking distance of the school. It was a public school, but most of the students were children of Mennonite farmers of the area. The teacher was my mother's cousin. We spoke the same language (Low German) and most of the children at the school could speak Plautdietsch or at least understand it. However, no one did. The rule was to use only English at school. 

The teacher asked me if I knew the alphabet. Of course, I did. I had already finished grade two. I knew how to read books! She asked me to recite the alphabet. I recited it in German. Everyone smirked and snickered when they heard what to them was a distortion of their alphabet. The teacher said, "You must  learn it in English." And she wrote the word English on the blackboard, in big letters. Then she had all the children recite the alphabet in English for my benefit. I didn't think I would ever be able to learn it. I felt stupid and humiliated. 

I was so happy when the school day was over and I could go home to my familiar surroundings with the people I loved, who spoke my language. I went and sat beside the bed  my sister and I shared and tried to coax her out from under it. She had run home from school at recess that day and was afraid of getting punished for it! (I've written about this in an earlier post, see Sept.1, 2015, Two Little Words.)

Just recently I visited with a friend (just a few years younger than I am) who told me that she was born left-handed and was forced to write with her right hand at school. When she couldn't comply, the teacher tied her left hand to her chair so she couldn't use it. She is traumatized by that experience to this day, and panics when she is told to turn left or right, not sure which direction is which. For her driving test she wrote an L on her left hand and an R on her right! (I just noticed that the nun is writing on the blackboard with her left hand! Was that intentional on the artist's part, I wonder?)

As I stood there looking at the picture in the MHCGallery exhibit, I realized that my experience and that of my left-handed friend's is only the tip of the iceberg compared to what it was like for the Indigenous children in the residential schools. They couldn't go home after school to speak their familiar language, eat the food they loved, hug their parents, or sleep in their own beds. Not only were they deprived of everything they knew and loved, many of them were also physically and sexually abused. How did they even survive? Many did, but with broken bodies and spirits.

A little girl of about four or five years old did a beautiful butterfly dance for us. She was so innocent. I felt a deep sadness when I watched her and thought of all the children who were robbed of their childhood, whose lives were destroyed by uncaring adults.

One of the items on display was a a replica of a Manitoba residential-school uniform, adorned with colorful ribbons, tassels and silver jingles belonging to an Anishinaabe Jingle Dress, traditionally worn at Pow Wows. The artist, Jubilee Dueck Thiessen, writes:

A Pow Wow is a gathering to be thankful and to celebrate culture and friendship. I wanted to honor the reclaiming of that cultural tradition.  . . .  The Jingle Dress Dance is considered a healing dance.  . . .  My piece is an effort to mourn the horrific past of residential schools in Canada  . . . while celebrating the rich culture of the people who were impacted.

(The dress has been blessed by Aboriginal Elder Myra Laramee.)

(Maria Epp)

Regarding this painting the artist writes:

Reconciliation comes through loving bonds that form over long periods of time. This image is part of a greater place in my heart of forgiveness. Where my ancestors come to my friends' ancestors and apologize and ask for forgiveness. Where gifts are exchanged and a future is formed where our children are raised together in love.  . . .  I see our education system as the place where most change can occur. I am advocating for grandparents and elders to bring their stories to the children in the school.

(Daryoush Abbasi)

A Miracle

It was bitter cold on January 13, 1968, the day two people made a promise to each other to stay together "in sickness and health until death doth us part."  Fifty years later (Jan. 13, 2018), Hardy and I are still together.

To this day we consider it a miracle; we cannot possibly see it any other way. Two people, looking for love, somehow find each other and stay together for 50 years! That's pretty amazing. What's even more astonishing is how it came about.

Our engagement in September 1967

After I graduated from high school (in Didsbury, Alberta), I came to Winnipeg and lived here a year until the rest of our family joined me (see my blog post, "Heimweh," March 11, 2016). 

My first job was at Christian Press, a bookstore and printing press. A big section of the store dealt with German books and I was hired because I knew the language. The Mennonite Brethren Bible College was located a few blocks away and we handled the textbook orders for the college. 

I had  left all my high school friends behind in Alberta, and I was lonely. I needed a social life. So I took note of the male students who came into the store. But I was shy and no one seemed interested in me. One of the fellows "of interest" reminded me of my father because he was sociable and friendly and short like Dad. Also, he spoke German with our bookstore manager ... hmm ... .

Then he didn't appear anymore. I asked our bookkeeper about him and he told me that he had gone to Ontario to complete his degree in theology. Oh well ... Ontario seemed like another part of the world ... .

That spring my sister and I were baptized and joined the Mennonite church close to our home. It was a solemn occasion, a time when we promised to stay true to God and the church, and were able to participate in communion with the rest of the congregation. Before communion, the pastor encouraged each of us newly baptized members to ask God to guide us in our future endeavours. He said we should not hesitate to be specific. So I decided to be specific with God! I told God that I was looking for a life partner and that I was interested in marrying a pastor or a missionary. But if that was not God's plan for my life, I would be okay with that, too. A strange peace came over me and I felt that whatever would be would be, and I didn't have to worry anymore.

A few days later I received a lovely card from that friendly guy who had gone off to seminary in Ontario, congratulating me on my baptism. Two weeks after that I received a postcard from Switzerland.
I was puzzled. How did he even know I was baptized, and what was he doing in Switzerland?

The two postcards that mystified and excited me

It turned out that our bookkeeper at Christian Press had told him that I had inquired of his whereabouts and he had also told him about my baptism. In fact, unbeknownst to me, Hardy had actually been present at my baptism just days before he flew to Europe for the summer to do some voluntary service! 

At the end of the summer Hardy returned and we went on our first date. That evening he informed me that the next day he was scheduled to go to Congo for two years to participate in the translation of the Old Testament into an African trade language. Could we stay in touch?

We began a two-year correspondence, and at the end of those two years we were committed to each other. 
The word "coincidence" was not on our radar. We considered it nothing short of a miracle. I believe that has been the glue that has kept us together all these years, through the many ups and downs of our relationship. 

Hardy gave me this poem a long time ago, before we had any idea about what life would throw at us. I have kept it in my album all these years.

Purpose

A phrase I heard often in my childhood was, "You did it on purpose!"  This meant I was accused of deliberately causing whatever incident had happened; it had been no accident. My apology was not accepted because I had acted wilfully!

Purpose is the word I was given for 2018 by my church fellowship. Although I picked the word from a bag containing many other words, it seems to have chosen me. It has been 'whispering' to me ever since, almost like an earworm! Sometimes I hear it as produce, perform, propose, or even purchase.  But I recognize these as distortions of the word.  I think perhaps they are words that offer an easier way, words that entice me (according to my Enneagram personality type).

A question I ask myself:

How do I stay true to this word? How do I flesh out its meaning for my life this year? 

I must admit that 2018 for me did not begin with purpose but rather with a nasty cold that was quite debilitating and left me helplessly stranded on the couch with nothing I could do, certainly nothing that had purpose (except perhaps to get better by resting!). At night I felt myself dealing with insomnia, so I did a lot of reading. Through my reading I heard some wise voices that calmed  my earworm:

"[T]he fundamental experience of God is one of being at peace and unafraid since God is so much stronger than everything else." (Marcus Peter Rempel, in Life at the End of Us vs. Them, quoting James Alison's interpretation of the prophet Isaiah's encounter with the divine, p. 213)

That statement gave me cause for some reflection and a gradual sense of peace about my word and its implications. It also reminded me of the strong and courageous women portrayed in a coffee-table book of paintings and stories by the artist Ray Dirks and a group of people who desired to honour their mothers and grandmothers for their courage and faith at a time when their world was falling apart.

As I gazed at their faces and read their stories (including those of my great-grandmother, grandmother and mother), I wondered what these women would have thought of the word purpose when their loved ones were taken from them, their homes plundered and burned, and their lives in danger.

Continuing to quote from Rempel: "[T]he marker of genuine encounter with the Great Mystery is this fundamental experience of peace -- and a resulting peaceableness of character. When the well is deep, all drink from the same great aquifer. But deep wells are not arrived at by scratching a little here and a little there. They are the product of long digging in one place. Deep wells are dug by people who choose a home." (Ibid.)

What home could these women choose when they really had no choice?  

They chose, first of all, to be at home in God, the eternal. They did this with determination and purpose.

That is one thing I can do. 

"The process of life demands that some things pass away to make room for others. The leaves fall, to be replaced, next spring, by new buds. Generation succeeds generation. Last year's dying fruit is this year's seed. It is the pattern of the creation.
But God never departs.  . . .  In [God] is a rest which cannot be disturbed, a love which lasts forever." (Augustine of Hippo)

The Meaning of Gifts

When we give something to someone we enter into a many-sided relationship, for in return we hope for the gift of love. (Paul Tournier)

We are in the month of December, the time of gift-giving. Recently, while shopping for Christmas gifts, I went to a craft sale where I saw the most amazing thing. A young Aboriginal woman was making dream catchers. I glanced at them, then stopped and looked again. There was something strangely familiar about these dream catchers. Inside the top circle were hand crocheted doilies that looked identical to the ones my Mennonite mother and grandmother used to make, as did most of their friends. 
I was astonished. I asked the artist if she had crocheted these doilies herself, and she smiled and told me she had obtained them at a thrift store. It just so happened that I had recently given all the doilies I had kept over the years to our local MCC thrift store. What a gift it was to me to realize that these doilies were being used and appreciated, and that some of mine might even be among them! I wondered what my mother and grandmother would think about that, and it made me smile. 

Following my haircut yesterday, the hairdresser gave me a gift. It was a pocket calendar for the new year and a pen to go with it, something they give to their clients every year at this time. Although I thanked her and told her it was my first Christmas present this year, subconsciously I thought, "I don't really need this calendar and we have so many pens already." I paid for my haircut and was about to leave when the hairdresser called out and said, "You forgot your gift," and handed me the calendar. 

When I got home I looked at the gift from my hairdresser again. I saw it from a different perspective. The black and white pen and the marbled black cover of the calendar were actually quite classy. How amazed and intrigued I would have been had I  received this calendar and pen as a school child in Paraguay. I realize how jaded I have become in this North American culture where everything is readily available.

Recently, as I was going through some of my mother's correspondence, I came across an interesting card. It was a Christmas card from Ukraine, sent to my grandmother by her oldest son from whom she was separated for many years. I can imagine how joyfully she accepted this gift from someone she had longed to communicate with for so many years.

The other day I received an e-mail from a friend; it is a gift I treasure because it validates something I love to do. She wrote:

Just a quick note to tell you how much your blog posts mean to me. I continually go back to them when looking for a life lesson or a pick-me-up . . . or things that simply bring me joy to read. The stories of your life are so fascinating. Please don’t ever stop writing. In fact I think you should write a book about your life. It would surely be a bestseller! 

I have given her the gift of my thoughts and experiences and she has given me the gift of appreciation and acknowledgement.

One of my favorite writers, Paul Tournier, wrote a booklet entitled The Meaning of Gifts (John Knox Press, 1964;  translated from the French, Des Cadeaux, Pourquoi ?).

He writes: Let us not underrate the joy of giving or the joy of receiving, for these are indissolubly related, and both symbolize the joy of loving and the joy of being loved. 

Christmas is a time to give each other the gift of unconditional love, modeled by a little child whose birth we still celebrate after more than two thousand years.

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on his shoulders; and his name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

Final Preparations

Every year at this time we come face to face with the season of dying. Every year it seems to come as a surprise, as if we never experienced it before. Those of us who are not fond of winter look out of our windows with disgust and loathing on our faces. 

What is that white stuff coming at us all of a sudden? It's not even Halloween yet! We didn't have a long enough season to prepare ourselves for this onslaught! Why is it suddenly so cold? Where did we put our winter boots last spring? I only have one winter glove, the other one fell out of the car last spring and we've forgotten all about it.

Those who love winter just smile and open their arms to it. Their Christmas lights were put up well ahead of time when the weather was still bearable. Their winter boots are nicely arranged at the side entrance, and their gloves and toques are placed in a basket in the closet ready for the winter adventures.  

Some of us are in the autumn season of our lives. Even though we have watched our parents and other loved ones live through their final days, most of us don't accept the fact that some day we will experience this as well. How do we prepare for that "some day" as it approaches?

Our family spent many years in the (Belgian) Congo. There we had ample opportunity to become familiar with death in all its raw forms. I was pregnant when we arrived in January 1969. We lost our baby son that May (see blog posting of June 2014).
http://ens-intransit.blogspot.ca/2014/06/remembering-is-way-of-meeting.html

This personal experience prepared me more than anything else for some of the cultural responses to death. I saw that my Western co-workers were not good at it. Some avoided me altogether. Others prepared a birthday cake for me (it happened close to my 26th birthday) and acted cheerful. Others told me it was probably best, because he might have been born with defects (he wasn't).

I shared two experiences of how the Congolese deal with death in Doris Janzen Longacre's book Living More With Less (1980, pp.193-194). 

One who comforted me most was an African cleaning woman who came into my hospital room. This is what I wrote:

While I was alone in the hospital room trying to come to grips with what had happened, a middle-aged African cleaning woman came quietly into the room. As she began cleaning she turned to me and said a few words in a language I didn't understand. I shrugged my shoulders to indicate that I didn't know what she was saying. She reverted to sign language and now I knew she was asking about my baby. How was I to tell her that he had died? I tried, then just shook my head. Overcome with grief, I burst into tears. Her eyes told me that she understood. She was a complete stranger and yet she began to weep with me. As she went about her work she mourned softly. Her caring comforted me.

I also described another experience I had sometime later:

As I sat on my veranda overlooking the street below, I suddenly heard a wailing that gripped my heart and stopped my breath. A woman, stripped to the waist, with ashes falling from her disheveled hair, stumbled down the street. Other women were supporting her but her anguish seemed too deep to share. As they moved toward the river, the wailing increased. I recalled that the day before a teenage boy had drowned in that river. The men were still searching for his body, This was his mother. 

In the article I share that this woman was a Christian and that later at the church funeral she was calm and serene, but on this day she expressed her grief in her own way. 

After living in Congo for a longer time, I learned that the culture requires people to wail and grieve loudly so that they will not be accused of having caused the death.

In Africa, death is a fact and treated as such. There is no hiding behind soft music and heavily perfumed flowers. There is usually an all-night wake where singing and wailing take place.

A book review in the Winnipeg Free Press by Jura Koncius (Oct. 16, 2017) informs us that the Swedes are practical when it comes to death preparations. Entitled Leaving One Less Burden, the reviewer recommends that we "take a lesson from the Swedes and toss unnecessary trash before you die." The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (love that title!), written by the 80-ish artist Margareta Magnusson, will be published in North America in January.

Koncius writes: The main message from this mother of five is: take responsibility for your items and don't leave them as a burden for family and friends. It's not fair. . . . The concept of decluttering before you die, a process called "dostadning," is part of Swedish culture. (It comes from the Swedish words for death and cleaning.) . . . Magnusson suggests that 65 is a good time to start death cleaning, but the process is freeing at any age.

I take some comfort in the fact that I was 65 when we moved from Ontario to Manitoba and really cleaned up a lot of clutter that had accumulated over twenty-four years of family life. At that time I was not familiar with the term death cleaning, I just knew that we couldn't possibly take all that stuff along! However, accumulation is well on its way again. I must begin my dostadning soon (a.k.a decluttering or The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (see blog posting of July 2015):
http://ens-intransit.blogspot.ca/2015/07/life-changing-magic.html

Most of the Congolese people I remember would not relate to this Western concept of decluttering, since they live simply from day to day. However, we certainly can learn something about how they deal with death; they experience it more frequently than we do.

Can you relate some of your experiences in which you have observed how people prepare or refuse to prepare for their final moments?

A message of comfort and hope:

Just remember in the winter 

Far beneath the bitter snows

Lies the seed that with the sun's love

In the spring becomes the rose.