Author Archive for Dick Benner
Apologies for not keeping my promise of reporting in daily from Asuncion. What with the intensive activities, the sporadic internet connection and the demands on me as a conference reporter, this activity, though well-intentioned, got pushed to the bottom of the daily routine.
What an amazing experience! The gathering of nearly 6,000 Mennos from around the globe, including the diversity of tongue and nationality, is truly an uplifting and life-changing event.
It is difficult to put into words–the worship inspiration, the singing, the drama of scripture presentations by persons with national garb and gestures, the whirlwind of activities, including stimulating workshops, musical groups performing in the chapel, childrens’ parades, local tours and the experience of eating in the mass dining hall in the basement of this large complex–hospitality of the local Paraguayan churches.
There are the moments of serious historical reflections, like the workshop I attended where Larry Miller, executive secretary of MWC, had six presenters from the “churches of the world.” I was especially struck by the representative from the Vatican, who jokingly introduced himself as “the guest from Babylon,” but who, in a more serious vein, named the division we have nursed for nearly 500 years as a “sin” by both sides of the conflict.
In another post I will describe my feelings about the obvious disconnect between our “talk” about peace and justice being our highest priority at the moment and looking across the street to housing and living conditions of the worst possible kind. And to see the street vendors hawking their food outside our “court” is another reminder that within these walls of privilege and power we have a long way to go to address what is right under our eyes–not only Paraguay, but in Canada and the US, Europe, Africa, Asia and other Latin American countries.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JMYovPxE-0[/youtube][/youtube]
Picking up on the last sentence of my previous post, about things that are important, this next post will be about my latest job. This summer I have found three jobs. I like to say this as often as possible, because it makes me feel important, but clearly having three very part-time jobs does not make me important. The job that takes up the most amount of time is eight hours. The one that takes the least amount of time is two hours. The job that takes up eight hours of my week is providing personal support work to a young man with intellectual disabilities.
In the brief time I have been employed there, I have learned many things. The ‘learning’ I would like to share in this posting is about friendship. One day, while the man I support was out getting a haircut, his mom came over, and while she cooked, I talked to her. In this conversation it came up how she, like many other people, is nervous about speaking in front of others. I tried to tell her how, in my experience, speaking in front of groups is really not that bad, but she told me that she knows how malicious people can be to speakers. Since a good part of my life is spent talking to groups of other people, I have learned to get over it. She countered by saying that I just teach people, that I don’t have to share of myself, and the malice is not so strong.
Her assertion was partly correct. While I have shared in church and with friends, what I do when I teach is share entertaining stories about my interests and activities, but not that much about myself. I began to realize that she can’t talk about her interests and her life experience without giving away really personal details. How lucky am I that I have many experiences and am able to share what I want when I want. Is that luck? Or is it self-protection that prevents really getting to know another person?
Since writing is probably the activity I do most frequently, after reading and sleeping, it is natural that I spend a fair amount of time thinking about it. Yesterday morning I began to ponder the physical act of writing, or, the difference between writing by hand and writing on the computer. I think it’s safe to assume that there is a difference in the part of the brain used for these two different, yet similar, activites. For one, writing by hand requires concentration. When I take pen to paper, I can only do that one thing, whereas while typing I can listen to music, watch a youtube video and check my bank balance. Writing by hand also requires the use of hand and arm muscles that increasingly fall into disuse. Since I hardly ever write by hand, I begin to get cramps after writing really very little. The physical, focussed, sometimes-painful nature of writing by hand also seems to have the power to clear my mind of all the dust that bounces around in it. If de-technologizing helps me focus, maybe I could gain more clarity by buying an inkwell?
Anxiety about the future is something that is, I believe, common to many. At my tender age, I find myself often anxious about my own future. Am I doing the right thing? Am I following my calling? What if I never heard God call me? How can I know, then, that what I am doing is the right thing? Since I am not a person blessed with lasting feelings of certainty, I seldom have good answers to any of these questions. I find myself relying on my feelings about particular events, something that makes me uncomfortable.
Recently, however, I was fortunate enough to do something that I found personally and vocationally fulfilling. I went to my first real academic conference related to what I study. There, I presented a paper I was fairly interested in, and was lucky to be part of a panel of people who presented even more interesting papers. I found their ideas so interesting, in fact, that the two or so hours the panel lasted were, for me, a brief moment of bliss. This discovery is heartening, because it shows me that I find at least part of what I spend my time doing is fulfilling/enjoyable; yet, it continues to unsettle me. While I like learning, I always thought I should do something that would help people or make the world better. Being a student makes my life pretty good, but it doesn’t help people the way a real doctor would. But being a student provides me with many opportunities to build relationships, and I hope that through these, the world becomes a little bit of a better place.
This morning I biked all the way from my home to downtown. In my ride I had time to do many things, including one of my all time favourite hobbies, people watching. It is interesting to see what kind of people live where and what their activities are at 9 in the morning. One of the most disturbing activities, in my opinion, is looking through garbage. I am definitely not above this kind of activity. In fact, by keeping my eyes peeled I have acquired a drying rack and yesterday evening, two new books. The disturbing thing this morning was watching people look through the recycling for cans and bottles to be returned to the beer store for money. The amount of money per bottle is so small that many people apparently don’t even bother, but for these people this appears to be an important part of their income. Watching these people makes me sad. Their poverty existed before our current recession and whatever economic stimulus packages our government is providing will likely not reach them. My own life barely crosses paths with theirs. Looking at a situation like this I feel helpless and wonder what I should do. Maybe I don’t need to ‘do’ anything right away. Sitting helpless, something that does not come easily to me, could be what I am meant to do right now.
I seem to find facebook quizzes very thought provoking. Some of you may remember a quiz I did a couple of months ago called “How Mennonite Are You?” This morning, I did another quiz, called how Nicaraguan are you. Normally I ignore quizzes (or don’t publish the results so that other people don’t realize the depths of my essay-induced procrastination), but this one seemed interesting to me. It was sent to me by a Nicaraguan/Canadian friend who I met here in Toronto this past year.
In Nicaragua, I really tried to learn as much as possible about the culture and people and, as a result, ended up fitting in as best I could. I guess I did become, in my friend’s words, Nicanadian, or, as the quiz this morning told me, Nica de corazon. (Not that I truthfully answered all of the questions, I just answered them how I would if I were Nicaraguan.)
What does this mean? Does it mean that I am actually Nicaraguan? Or, maybe it means, and here I quote one of my Nicaraguan friends, that I am Nicanadiense, or Nicanadian. This strange nationality is somehow fitting. It represents (the little I can grasp of) postmodernism, and what I feel about labels in general: they are sometimes useful but mostly misleading. When I lived in Nicaragua, I was in the country, but not from there, so I did what I could to make a good life for myself there. This is faintly reminiscent of how I try, and fail, to live the admonition to be in the world but not of it. An admonition that, to my knowledge, does not come with a neologism.
Memory is a funny thing. A few days ago, I left my house, final essay in hand, or rather, in purse, and I somehow got to thinking of my Egyptian address. I haven’t though of it in years, but it all came back: 14 El Sobki Street 1, Mansheyet El Bakri … Memory is funny like that. You think that whatever happened to you in the past happened in the past and stays there. Except for when it doesn’t.
On the other hand, we can try and re-create memories to re-create happy moments of our past. There’s one taste that to me is so Egyptian. The taste of drinking water after eating some freshly baked bread. I have never successfully recreated this taste with any other kind of bread, nor do I have any idea what makes that combination taste the way it does. This is not the only food I have tried to make in my memory’s image. Needless to say, none of my re-creations have turned out perfectly, something I find frustrating.
It also makes me wonder why I am so driven to re-create the past. I think sometimes it’s hard to face the present because of mistakes that I’ve made in the past. My longing for second chances makes me want to re-live the past but with a different outcome. Unfortunately, this nostalgia doesn’t change reality.
I would do well to remember that Jesus offers us an opportunity for redemption. Unfortunately, Jesus is no time-machine who can help us re-live our lives with better outcomes. If only.
This past year I have read many books. So many, in fact, that I don’t want to count them all. I guess this was bound to happen since I am a student of literature. Some of these books have been novels, others, collections of poetry, and some have even been literary theory. It’s hard to say what has really been my favourite. When I began my studies I thought that contemporary literature was where it was at but, as far as I can tell, contemporary literature prefers strange, non-linear plots that question every tenet that was ever held. This makes for books that are interesting to study but not very enjoyable reads. I also read books from the public library and friends and family in my free time. One of those books is called Somewhere Else by Jan Guenther Braun. It is this author’s first novel, and was published a few years ago. It occupies a strange land in between reading for pleasure and reading for study.
This novel is the story of a young woman’s coming-out process and her distance from and then acceptance of (?) her Mennonite background. I think this book is good, in that it is part of a new generation of Mennonite writers. On the other hand, as a first attempt, it is not that well-written. Some of the novel’s statements about, say, Mennonite history, are just that: statements. They are ‘plunked’ into the novel instead of being woven into the plot. I think this is the main problem with the novel. It’s potential is not fully reached. It seems like a fairly typical teenage angst novel with the added interest of being about people and places I am familiar with. This is unfortunate, really, as the topics it deals with are certainly relevant in our Canadian Mennonite context. Perhaps Guenther Braun’s next attempt will continue to be relevant, and written in a better way.
As I mentioned yesterday, I have been doing a lot of writing lately. One essay in particular captured my attention: the essay about Reina Maria Rodriguez. Her vision of “female subjectivity” (fancy words for what I understand to be the poetic voice’s search for identity (still a bit cheesy I know)) presented in two collections of her poetry, Paramos and Foto del invernadero. Fragments of these collections are available in English at your neighbourhood university library, and they are well worth checking out.
These poems talk about all kinds of topics, from the everyday to the transcendental, and I think that is why I like them. The person these poems portray is reaching fro a full understanding of herself, and through this process she defies most commonly helpd beliefs, about Cuba, about women, about poetry and about what you should talk about in poetry. The stream of consciousness is carefully constructed to look authentic (well, my thoughts are never that coherent, even as they spill from my mind, so if that’s how her mind works, wow).
My favourite part of her poetry is when she talks about writing. She (the poetic voice) feels that when she writes she experiences a “lucidez sin designio” or clarity without bounds. She feels that another being inhabits her, and that and so then that her pages fill up with words outside of her control. These words are so powerful that she feels they could “stave off death” or “change”. I like these expressions because they express how I feel about my writing. I don’t think I write things that are worth reading unless I am really inspired, and sometimes I do feel that another part of me completely takes over when I’m writing. I don’t think that what I write will stave off death or change much, but in some way I do hope that my reflections serve a purpose.
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