Amina Saïd Sentiers de lumière

Amina Said, court. Africa Center for the Creative Ar

A franco-phone poet from Tunisia could easily have written of the Martyrs' Trek:

Amina Saïd

Tunis, Tunisia (1953)

(English trans Mary Ann Caws (following))

Sentiers de lumière

(extraits)

j’ai dormi trois siècles sur un lit de rochers

j’ai vu des choses oubliées des homes

j’ai mesuré la distance qui sépare le ciel de la terre

j’ai lu les lignes de la main j’ai rendu les oracles

une voix qui n’était pas la mienne a parlé par ma bouche

j’ai disparu dans une ville elle-même disparue

des cavaliers en armes ont envahi nos plaines

nous sommes restés dans l’attente d’autres barbares

la mer s’est retiree des porte de ma ville

je me suis concilié les fleuves de la terre

j’ai orné le jour du tatouage de mes rêves

mon visage a vu mon autre visage

Are Mexico's Mennonites Leaving for Russia?

ne Trigjfoat

Bottom (c) El Universal.com.mx

    Honestly, this story is difficult to navigate – it is full of contradictions and surprising vitriol, but if true, it could indicate a hundred-year reversal of Mennonite immigration out of Russia back to the steppes and arid lands of their forefathers – well, a few of the fore-parents anyway…  but Mexico’s Mennonites, or at least some of them, might be heading back to Russia and Kazakhstan by 2014.  The ink might already be drying on the new deeds.

    The reason this story is difficult to follow is that it takes place in at least three very different languages – none of which are English – and I am not certain of either the electronic translations or search results for further information.  [Note:  I have contacted various groups to obtain more reliable “official” information, and will share this via the blog as I receive responses.]

    According to GAMEO.org, several thousand Mennonites chose to leave Canada for Mexico in 1922-1927, representing the entire Alt Kolonie subculture and many Sommerfelder (later to be also joined by numerous conservative Kleine Gemeinde who would settle near and in Belize).  According to GAMEO.org, the settlers migrating to Mexico represented the most conservative of the earlier Russian Mennonite immigrants into Canada and their move to Mexico was in reaction to early 20^th Century governmental efforts to Canadianize the Mennonite immigrants – especially in the area of education and language rights, felt to have been guaranteed under the original agreements with Crown authorities extended to encourage Mennonite immigration to Manitoba.  While GAMEO.org focuses on language rights, one must assume that struggles by Canadian Mennonites to maintain their exemptions from military service during World War 1 – and American imprisonment of conscientious objectors during the same war, probably played a similar role in the decision to immigrate, as well as the perennial need for additional farmland and cultural seclusion.

Mennonites and Wilderness

Mennonites and Wilderness

ne Wiltness

      Faith Mennonite’s sermon on 02 September was “Learning from the Wilderness,” (Deut 4:1-2, 6-9; Mark 7:1-8; 14-15, 21).  Dan Leisen and Gerald Schlabach spoke on their wilderness experience at the International Boundary Waters, a popular national wilderness area that excludes all forms of modern convenience that do not run on muscle power alone.  I took two observations away from this presentation – both men departed from my traditional understanding of the Deuteronomy passage as pertaining to the development of the interior life of the individual and of the congregation.  Instead, they focused on the rules that allow you to enter the wilderness, such as “Leave no trace.”

    Heidi Wall Burns wrote her masters’ thesis at Iowa State on changing perspectives of “wilderness” in United States’ literature – indicating and exploring shifts between fear and terror to Romanticism and Exploitation to Preservation.  Leisen and Schlabach would seem to be representative of the latter.

    Similarly to American culture, the Mennonites have gone through many different periods of fear and romanticism regarding wilderness.  The 1860s and 1870s were decades of unrest in the frontier amongst the Cherokee, Sioux and other Western tribes – the Custer incident occurred as late as 1876 – two years after the initial immigration of Russian Mennonites to Nebraska and Kansas.  The Sioux Uprising of 1862 enabled Federal troops to evict the tribes from treaty lands in southwestern Minnesota, further opening up space for Mennonite expansion into that area as well.