Retaining Honour--Post 5

Yesterday I wrote about identity.

If we (conservative/Christian folks) are going to insist that:

a)      Gender is intrinsic, and

b)      There are only two genders and

c)      Your gender was given to you by God

d)     Denoting both gift and purpose and

e)      It is not to be changed or altered. . .

Then: it is a serious –dare I say—sin! to challenge someone’s birth identity as male or female.

And: we have to make room at the male/female tables for all men and women, regardless of their talents, size, interests, giftings, choices, or behavior.

To imply that someone is somehow less male, not quite a woman, a bit off, not quite sure, unworthy, or not enough is to say that you don’t really believe that gender is a God-given trait, but that it has to somehow be chosen and earned and maintained.  Like you did.

We could all think of fifty examples of potential or actual troubled identities.  My sister’s big, raw-boned friend who enjoyed farm work and somehow landed in a batch of charming, flouncy-skirted Southern girls in her youth group, and who always felt like she wasn’t quite the right gender.

The small, shy man who never married.

The woman who hates to shop and feels out of place at Tupperware parties.

The man who is terrified of spiders and snakes.

You're thinking of a few right now, I'll bet.

 

If you have issues with cultural identity, as my dad and brother did because of being studious Amish, and a shaky gender identity as well, maybe by being a Mennonite woman who hates to sew and bake but likes to study forestry,  then God have mercy on you.

If you really believe the Bible on this, then the woman I met who worked for her brother and fixed small engines in his shop: she is fully a woman.

The guy I know who enjoys decorating for events and making rooms beautiful: he is fully a man.

We who believe in gender as God-given and unchangeable need to affirm the men and boys in our lives as fully male and the women and girls as fully female.*  No arched eyebrows, no nudges, winks, implications, hints, closed circles, suggestions, exclusions, or faintly-innuendoed jokes and comments.

This is not to say that you can't more fully realize your potential as a man or woman.  But first you are what you are.

 

Tomorrow: surprising Biblical women

*to the inevitable anonymous commenter: transgender issues are outside the scope of this post and this is not addressing how—beyond being kind--you should or should not treat people who wish to be identified as another gender or none at all.

Retaining Honour--Post 4

Identity has to do with who you are, a complicated soup of innate traits, family history, personal choices, others’ responses to you, and much more.

If your identity is solid and healthy, you don’t have to spend your life trying to figure it out, and you have the emotional energy for meaningful work and happy family relationships and making good choices because you don’t have to prove anything.

I was born into an Amish family.  We were the real deal--the Pennsylvania German language, horses, buggies, thrift, shame, the Lob Lied, hired drivers, big gardens, hooks & eyes on mutza suits.

My dad and my one brother were, by nature and gifting, scholars.  They would both have made fantastic researchers, spending years deep in dusty volumes, exploring obscure threads of history.

But they were Amish, and the Amish had no slot for scholars.

A good Amishman was a farmer--a good farmer, with grade-A milk and all the weeds trimmed around the outbuildings.  If you couldn’t farm, then you were a carpenter or something equally physical.

This isn’t something I discuss with my dad and brother, all of us still being at least half Amish at heart, but I think it messed with their identities.

Here they were, driven by deep curiosity and intelligence and God-given talents.  That was who they were.   And born into, and deeply identifying with, this closed, unique culture.  That was who they were, also.

But the other Amish made them feel like they somehow weren’t really Amish, they couldn’t be, because they weren’t ambitious farmers or efficient carpenters.

I wonder: why was there no room for them?  This was not a Biblical issue.  Surely there would have been some way for them to be wholly who they were--fully Amish and fully studious and impractical.

It did not do good things to their identity.

Tomorrow: more on identity—what do we do to the woman mechanic, the man who is afraid of spiders?

Retaining Honour--Post 3

Sometimes people expect me to be some version of feminist because I'm a Mennonite lady who writes.  But I don't identify as feminist because:

2^nd reason: I don’t have the energy for sustained outrage. 

I ran across a Christian feminist post a while back where the author listed a bunch of Christian blog posts that were disgustingly sexist.  Look at this!  Terrible! These people need to be held accountable for their words!!

I read a few of them, expecting a rant about keeping wimmin in their place via daily beatings.  There was nothing of the sort.  Finally I figured out that the writers had referred to women as “girls.”

I decided I don’t have the time or energy to be upset about this.  Maybe when every orphan has a home and Beijing’s air is breathable and the national debt is paid off, then we’ll talk about referring to women as girls.

3^rd reason:  Feminists re-write history.

In my experience, this shows up most in literature courses and articles.   There’s this unquestioned “fact” that in the past all women were forced by an oppressive male-dominated culture into weak, passive, narrow roles.  And all women in the church have always been oppressed.  So the modern prefaces to all kinds of literature, from Little Women to The Easter Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, exclaim about how amazing it is that this early example of feminism and these strong female characters showed up way back then!  Back when women were all powerless and oppressed!

Never mind that this “fact” of past oppressed womanhood bears no resemblance at all to your own experiences, or people you knew, or your great-aunt who homesteaded a South Dakota farm with her husband and shot rattlesnakes in the root cellar with a six-shooter.

One last reason I don’t identify with feminists:  I think it’s a kindness to warn people not to swim in shark-infested water or to put raw meat in their backpacks on a hike through grizzly country.  A while back Emily Yoffe wrote an article on Slate telling college women that they shouldn’t get drunk at parties because it increased their chances of getting raped.  She was flooded with criticism from feminists for “victim-blaming.”  I realized that it's a free country and they can say whatever they want, but I simply don’t have a slot in my brain for that way of thinking.

But enough about feminism, since most of us aren’t that extreme.

Tomorrow: thoughts on identity.

Retaining Honour: Post 2

Let me be up front about this: I believe in creation, in design, in intent.

Your gender is not an accident.  There’s something sacred about it.  “Male and female created he them,” Genesis says.  “In the image of God.” 

God created you to be you.  He knit you together in your mother’s womb, Psalm 139 says.  That design includes your eye color, your height, and your hair texture, and lots more that you didn't choose.  And your gender.

For someone born with normal body, brain, and and chromosomes, to attempt to change this essential part of yourself seems to me to be rejecting a precious gift and to take control of a part of your soul that isn’t yours to alter.

Here’s the first area where the feminists and I part ways.  According to Wikipedia, “At the core of these theories [feminism/women’s studies] is the notion that however one identifies, gender, sex, and sexuality are not intrinsic, but are socially constructed.”

And that, as I said, is one way we differ.

In our women’s Sunday school class, we’ve been studying the women of the Bible, which got me thinking along these lines.  It’s a fascinating study.

I also recommend Elisabeth Elliot’s Let Me Be a Woman, and Rick Rhodes’s Created with Purpose.

Next time: Another reason I’m not a feminist.


Note: Dear Anonymous commenter: Obviously I am not an expert on transgender or dysphoria issues.  The operative words here are "seems to me." I am not advocating violence for anyone who disagrees.  You can email me at letterfromhburg@juno.com. 

Retaining Honour: Post 1

We are confused about gender.  “We” meaning society in general, the church far too often, and me in particular, at times.

Today, someone posted a picture of one of the Duck Dynasty guys supposedly saying, “Listen up ladies, if your man doesn’t know how to hunt and fish, you have a girlfriend.”

Is that really what it means to be a man?  Maybe it’s no wonder people wonder if they were born with the “right” gender.

Meanwhile, news feeds and radio programs offer updates on the latest contrived ways to make women realize their potential.

I heard an NPR program the other day in which they interviewed a woman who devised programs to get girls into STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Math] classes.  She sounded quite ambitious on behalf of females, but in glaring dissonance, she spoke in that terrible irritating “uptalk” so prevalent among young women, where almost every phrase sounds all uncertain, like a question requiring affirmation before she can continue.  “And I worked with a professor?  Who was almost entirely lecture based??  And I was like, developing more hands-on technical material???”

“How can we encourage our daughters to try STEM fields?” said the interviewer.

“The important thing?  Is to teach them?  Not to be afraid of failure??” replied this shining example of confident intelligent womanhood.

Confusing.

Sheryl Sandberg says women should lean in, and girls should be bossy but we shouldn’t use that word.

A young man from a conservative Mennonite church in the Midwest told me how much he likes to hunt, thereby qualifying as masculine by the Duck Dynasty standard.  And, interestingly, by his church’s gauge as well.  “Do girls in your church go hunting?” I asked him.  He said, “No, we actually have a rule that they can’t.”

I thought but did not say: A—Nothing would make me want to go hunting like knowing there’s a rule against it.  And B—I hope you also have a rule that men can’t crochet.

Confusing.

I don’t have a lot of answers but writing things down helps me to figure out what I think.  So I plan to write a series of short blog posts cogitating on various aspects of what gender in general and femaleness in particular mean.

I was intrigued with this format when a Facebook friend named Bethany Eicher used a series of short posts to explore the subject of submission in marriage. [ http://bethany-aboutmyfathersbusiness.blogspot.com/] Unlike her, I am not brave enough to discuss submission at this point.  In fact, I am not into controversy and will shut things down if too much controversy erupts.  

Also, I am not an expert and there are plenty of issues I will not cover.  This will be just me talking so take it as such.

Tomorrow: design, creation, and sources for ideas.

Proverbs 11: 16--A gracious woman retaineth honour. . .

The New Cleaner

Paul's grandpa Orval built the warehouse that is now ours.  Paul and his dad got to be experts at fixing the cleaners, augers, and other parts of the process.

However, if something is installed in 1948, by about 2014 it becomes obvious that you can fix so much and then it needs to be replaced.

So a new cleaner was ordered.

A cleaner, in this case, is a machine about the size of your average espresso stand.  It is full of motors and chutes.  You can insert these big screens about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide.  The holes in the screens are  made to let specific seeds through and keep specific weeds out, or vice versa.  Seed [or grain or corn] comes in the top and flows down over the screens, which shake shake shake and sort sort sort and then the good stuff goes down in the hopper to get bagged by Steven, and the bad stuff goes into a big wooden box to turn into cattle feed.

After many delays and frustrations the new cleaner arrived, and on one of our snow days of last month, it was installed.

To my inexperienced eyes, it seemed to defy all the laws of physics--this long arm extending out from the big glorified forklift with 5000 pounds of new cleaner sitting on it, getting hoisted 20 feet in the air.  I kept thinking it was going to crash down and take the warehouse with it.

But of course it didn't.

Paul stood up there and yelled, and his nephew Keith slowly maneuvered the new cleaner in place in a very dicey and delicate operation.

I took some videos and posted them on YouTube for the sake of former sackers who might enjoy watching.

Here.

Here's Keith and his adorable daughter Isabella, in matching scarves.

 I don't think these machines are required to coordinate their colors and names, but they did, in one language or another.

Quote of the Day:
"Is there seed spillin' out of the cleaner-hopper??  Is the auger rattlin'??"
--Paul, at my birthday dinner last year when a warehouse emergency interrupted our meal

Pictures of the Shower

Yesterday I posted the Letter from Harrisburg about the bridal shower at Rosie's.  Here are photos of the event.  If you really want to know who was who, I list the real names here but changed a few of them to something kind-of-similar for the newspaper.

I have wonderful in-laws and I am grateful for them.

The brides!  Kayla on the left is engaged to marry Justin, who is a brother to Stephie on the right, who is engaged to Chris from Ohio.  Lisa in the center is Stephie's cousin and engaged to the amazing!! Kelly from Michigan.

Emily, Jessi, Isabella, JoNell, Anita, Bonnie[hidden], Shelley, and me

JoNell & Izzy, Shelley standing, Anita, Bonnie with Jada, Jenny with Amanda, Allison, Laura.  Bonnie, Laura, and I are married to brothers.

Anne, Orpha, and Trish on the couch, with Aubrey behind.

Getting ready to sing: Cassie's doll dressed for the occasion, Aunt Allene, Lois and her daughter Lisa, Rosie, Anne the Grandma and Rita [Kayla's mom]

Rosie handing a hymnal to her daughters, Cara and Cassie.  Jenny is holding Laura's little Amanda.  Anita, on the right, was invited as an honorary Smucker.

The brides.

The yummy food: Rosie, Lisa, Kayla, Jessi with Jada, Emily, Jenny, Allison

Picking delicacies to dip in chocolate requires deep concentration for most people, but Kayla finds it amusing.

Lisa and Emily have dramatic hands.

Simone, Dolly, Allene, and Lois, all truth-speaking Smucker women.

Gifts, ladies, and hymnals.

Allison and Jenny, already planning to be each other's bridesmaids.  But they plan to have lots of adventures before that day comes.

Letter from Harrisburg

Letter from Harrisburg

Brides bring bright glow to a shower in the storm

On a nasty winter night we pulled our wedding dresses out of sewing-room closets and out from under beds, slid them into clean garbage bags, and brought them to Rosie’s house, along with teapots, fruit trays and the fixings for a chocolate fountain.

Rosie hooked the hangers onto the heavy curtain rods above the picture windows on the west side. The dresses hung in a long row of hope, pure white, cream, yellowed with age. Tucks, buttons, gathers. Plain capes, ruffles, a row of covered buttons. Long skirts, just-below-the-knee skirts, satins and cottons and tone-on-tone flowers. A sleek cascade of cream-colored lace.

To the left hung Great-Aunt Alice’s, a simple knit dress with cutwork on the bodice that she wore at her wedding on the beach in Hawaii, love and marriage having arrived later in life when a big church wedding wasn’t a high priority.

Rachel’s was the fanciest of all, a heavy mass of late-’80s beads and gathers and ruffles with a big bow on the back.

“The only one I would wear, right now, is Annie’s,” said our daughter Emily, scanning them all and indicating the innocent eyelet dress from the ’70s with a rounded yoke and long, gathered skirt.

The three brides-to-be sat at one end of the living room just below three of the dresses. They smiled in a glowing haze of happiness while the rest of us handed our gifts to Rosie’s bright little girls wearing the pink-and-cream dresses that their cousins, one of them now a bride, had worn to their mother’s wedding. We hugged aunts and in-laws, bustled to the kitchen with our food and found seats in the crowded living room.

“Have you ever seen the likes of all these weddings?” we asked each other. “No!” “Never!” Three weddings in the Smucker family in three months’ time. Eight weddings altogether of young people we know well, involving, with some overlap, two nieces, one nephew, six of my husband’s former students, numerous friends of our children, lots of former little Sunday school students and Bible Memory Campers, ranging in age from 20 to 24 and suddenly engaged to be married.

I feel like my Aunt Vina must have when my sister and I were at this stage: “These little girls,” she had said in disbelief, “They actually think they’re getting married!”

“This is not going to be a normal bridal shower,” announced Rosie, my husband Paul’s youngest sister. “We’re all Smuckers, so first of all we’re going to sing.” And we did. Hymns, in fact, sung with the astonishing volume and skill for which Smuckers are known.

Outside, the drenching rain fell and the cold statistics blew — 60 percent of marriages at this age end in divorce, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Inside, we radiated hope and happiness.

It was time to share the advice we had brought for the brides.

“Forgiveness is really important,” said Jolene, herself not so far removed from being a newlywed. “Just letting go of the past and not hanging onto it.”

Annie said, “Some of the best advice I ever got was this — focus on what is, rather than on what is not.”

The brides smiled politely. Their mothers nodded solemnly. Yes. Mmm-hmmm. Very wise words.

I said, “Look in your own heart first. If something he does irritates you way more than is reasonable, look inside to see why this is such an emotional trigger for you.”

On around the circle we went. “Put him first,” Sheila said. “You won’t regret it.”

I leaned toward Linda. “This advice is more for us than for them, really. They don’t think any of this will ever apply to them.”

Linda whispered back, “They’re sure their marriages are going to be different!” We giggled.

Are we crazy, I wondered, to sit here, giddy in this bubble of expectation, knowing not only how rewarding marriage can be, but how unbelievably hard?

We have been through deep waters and loss and struggle, and times when we did not like each other at all. We have reached out for help and we have prayed hard and we have come out the other side still keeping our vows and believing that marriage is good.

We still love our husbands, and are loved, many years in. We still laugh.

We also know that the time for caution was months ago, back when Justin had serious talks with Kayla’s dad, and Chris flew to Oregon to show Stephie he really was serious about this, and Kelly decided it was time for action and asked Lisa that fateful question.

We have a lot of faith in these young women, all full of courage and good sense. Maybe you are more careful what sort of young man you choose when you know that 10 aunts and your mom will ask you hard questions about his character, attitudes, faults, goals, finances, driving record, history, church and treatment of his mom.

And if you have lingering delusions about one soul mate who will always meet your heart-deep longings, as 88 percent of young Americans apparently do, those same aunts will quickly scrub that notion out of your mind.

I put the kettle on for tea and warmed the teapots. Linda melted the chocolate for the fountain. The brides began opening gifts. Jenny and Allison, the two peas-in-a-pod 14-year-old cousins, already pledged to be each other’s bridesmaids, begged for stories.

“Tell about when Uncle Jim proposed!”

Linda sighed and smiled.

“OK, so we were driving along a freeway in Virginia, and all of a sudden he just turned to me and asked if I’d marry him! And there was this really noisy truck passing us right then, so I wasn’t sure if I’d heard right, plus I couldn’t believe he would just ask me like that, so I said, ‘What did you say?’ I was upset. I didn’t say yes right away. I said, ‘Well, I’m only 18. You’ll have to talk to my dad.’”

The girls howled. Linda said, “For years, I just hated it when women would start telling their engagement stories. I did not want to tell mine.”

Today, 24 years later, Jim is one of the most attentive and romantic husbands around. Linda is devoted to him, and she tells her proposal story with humor and grace.

We nibbled on pineapple wedges dipped in chocolate, sipped tea and told of wedding-dress regrets and wedding-day fiascos and the father-in-law who refused to wear a boutonniere, not that we’re still bitter about this.

Great-aunt Alice told of her and Rick’s 12 years together, all of them happy. “I can’t relate to all your advice about getting along, because we never really had disagreements to work through. Rick was just that sort of man.”

We nodded, still missing him.

The gifts, all new and untested, sat in three large piles. The brides posed for pictures, a triad of wisdom, innocence and hope, endlessly smiling.

We rinsed dishes, poured the last of the tea and said goodbye, with a quick hug for each bride. Then we gathered our things and headed out into the storm, holding our precious wedding dresses tight, shielding them safe from the wild wind and rain.