Musings on Anabaptism from Recent Trip

 

Our group posing in front of Konrad Grebel's
house in Zürich, Switzerland

My wife and I recently participated in an Anabaptist Heritage Tour led by Masthof tours. We were exploring the roots of the Clymer/Clemmer and Huber/Hoober in Switzerland, Germany and France. At each of the places we visited, we had an historian give us lectures on the history of the area. I learned a number of things about Anabaptism that were new for me. 

Over the years since the Constantinian Compromise (313 CE), when the church and the state became one, there were hundreds if not thousands of Bible study groups that arose trying to live faithfully the teachings of Jesus. 

The Catholic Church which became the official church of the Roman Empire, repressed any of these efforts. One exception was the movement started by Francis of Assisi. His theology paralleled many Anabaptist themes. It was tolerated as the Catholic Franciscan order of monks.

Peter Waldo started a movement in Lyon, France, ca. 1170 which eventually was called the Waldensians. He had the New Testament translated into French and took on a vow of poverty. As he read the New Testament in his own language, he became bolder in his critique of the Catholic Church. His preaching attracted a large number of people, and he was eventually excommunicated in 1184. 

Peter Waldo portrayed on the Reformation
monument in Worms, Germany

According to Philip Schmuki, retired pastor of the Mennonite Church in Langnau, the Waldensians, who had now penetrated much of Europe, made their way across the Alps into Switzerland from Italy, fleeing persecution. Schmuki claims that the Waldensian ideas laid the groundwork for the influx of Anabaptism in the Emmental Valley. 

While staying at my brother-in-law's house in Gümligen, I was asked to give a presentation about Anabaptism to their small group. I was delighted to know that some of them knew that this year is the 500th anniversary of the movement. They also all knew who Ulrich Zwingli was, but no one knew who Konrad Grebel, Felix Manz, or Georg Blaurock were. I told them that despite agreement on many issues, they wanted a more radical reform than Zwingli, and wanted the reforms to be instituted more quickly than Zwingli wanted. The main issues that were too radical for Zwingli were adult baptism, not bearing arms, not swearing of oaths, and the separation of church and state.

I asked them if they were aware of the book by Katharina Zimmerman titled Die Furgge. An historical novel, this book traces the story of Christian Hershey, who immigrated in 1717 to the USA. It describes the situation of Anabaptists in the Emmental Valley in the 17th Century. It sold over 350,000 copies in Switzerland and raised the awareness of the Swiss people about the severe persecution that they endured for their faith. Before this book, the Anabaptist story had been mostly erased from the consciousness of the Swiss people.

I traced for them the real Christian Hershey story, since I am also a relative. Along with that, I talked to them about the 2.2 million Mennonites in the world, and described the celebration of the 500th Anniversary in the Grossmünster in Zürich. They were surprised to know that there were so many Mennonites in the world, and that the majority of us are people of color.

I am thankful for the opportunity to have my own understandings stretched, and to pass my knowledge on to others who are not so aware.

Longing and Legacy

Aeronka Defender Aircraft

Among other comments under my High School yearbook picture was written, "interested in aviation." Interested was an understatement. I was longing to fly.

I waited patiently for the monthly magazine "Flying" to appear in our school library. I would read every page, drooling over the latest small aircraft advertisements. I would ride my bicycle with a friend nearly six miles to the local airport and pay for rides in small Cessna aircraft. 

After High School, I began taking flying lessons at the same airport. I reached the amount of hours needed to begin to my solo flights. During that time a group of friends interested in getting our pilot's licenses, formed a club and bought an old 1945 Aeronka Defender (like the one pictured above) to fix up and get ready to fly. It would save us a lot of money to have our own aircraft to complete our training for a license. I was longing to fly.

Life interrupted my longings. I was drafted during the Vietnam War and ended up doing a two-year alternate service assignment in Honduras. I listed "flying" as an interest of mine, so I got assigned to a job that involved a lot of flying, despite the fact that I had no credentials for it. I enjoyed flying from place to place in Honduras in small planes. I got to know the pilots, and when I had a seat beside them, they often let me take the controls. What fun, feeling the aircraft respond to my touch! Although getting my own license was postponed, my longing to fly was still within me.

Those 2-plus years I spent in Honduras impacted me greatly. I wrote a memoir of this time titled Coming of Age in Honduras: A Young Adult's Struggle with Faith, Poverty and Sexuality.  When I returned home, I decided to go to college, now five years older than those who would be my peers. Unfortunately, this postponed my longing to fly. As the cost rose and the job market shrank, my dream to be an aviator died. I sold my share in the aviation club, and didn't look back. Eventually I became a Spanish teacher and taught for over thirty years. 

In a recent Sunday school class, I was leading a discussion of the longings of Leah and Rachel from the Old Testament. Neither got exactly what they longed for, but their legacies live on to this day. As I was sharing my longing to be an aviator and how I had to give it up, someone from the class piped up: "Your longing was unfulfilled, but your legacy of influencing hundreds of students over the years lives on." I choked up at the comment. 

Before I left Honduras, my best Honduran friend said to me: "Never forget what you learned

My best friend in Honduras

while you were here. Tell your story to everyone you meet." His comment became my new longing; to tell the story of Honduras. My years of teaching Spanish and leading students on cross-cultural adventures to Guatemala was the means by which I told their story. Later, I began writing about these experiences and got them published in religious magazines.

My father, upon reading these stories in national magazines commented: "Your experience in Honduras really changed your life, didn't it?" to which I replied, "Yes, dad, Honduras had changed my life forever." That is the last line in my Honduras memoir mentioned above.

My legacy didn't come from what I had planned or wanted. It came through events that I didn't control. Like Leah and Rachel, our longings may not be fully satisfied, but God can transform them into unexpected legacies. 

Do You Believe in Angels?

I have neuropathy. Over the past several years I have become increasingly unstable on my feet. It also applies to riding a bike. 

This year our "men's group" (we've been doing something like this for many years) traveled to Greenbrier National Park in West Virginia to ride our bikes on the Greenbrier River Rail Trail on a Saturday, then hike on another trail the next day. The weather was perfect, the scenery gorgeous with the leaves beginning to change color. 

I was led to believe that we would ride out 11 miles on the rail trail, turn around and go back, totaling 22 miles, about my limit for such adventures. When we got to the turn around point in the trail, the rest of my companions decided that they wanted to ride another 11 miles to a tunnel up ahead. That would be 44 miles. I knew it would be too much for me in my condition, so I decided to return alone to our beginning point.

At the time I was feeling pretty good, but the return became increasingly difficult the more I rode. I discovered that the more tired I became, the more my balance issues kicked in. I was having trouble keeping my bike within the narrow tire tracks we had to travel on. I nearly wiped out once when my bike went off the path into the bushy weeds. I was miraculously able to steer my bike back on to the trail without falling over.

I had to rest nearly every three miles as my tired muscles increased the imbalance caused by my neuropathy. Several times when I stopped, riders passing me going the other way would stop and ask me if I was okay. Since there really wasn't much that they could do if I WASN'T okay, I pressed on. 

Sometimes I walked the bike for a few minutes before jumping back on. I kept thinking that our AirBnB was just around the corner. My fatigued condition kept getting worse. At one point, rather depressed about my situation, I got off the bike and found a place to sit down, hoping to regain some energy. Added to my woes were two other factors. My rear end was not taking kindly to the bike seat I had to sit on, and my toes constantly pushing against the front of my shoe were starting to develop blisters!

An iron bridge on the rail trail

While sitting, a man approached on his bicycle from the other side. His bicycle was the latest model with a very sophisticated computer attached to his handlebar. However, he was dressed formally with a Sunday-white button-down, long-sleeved shirt and dress slacks on. By now it was nearly 80º and had no trace of sweat on his brow or shirt. I was sweating profusely. He wore no helmet. He was trim and looked fit, only a few years younger than me, or so it seemed.

He stopped to chat and asked me where I was going. I told him, even though I really didn't know the name of town. He was local, and when I described to him what our AirBnB looked like, he knew exactly where it was. Apparently I had passed it over three miles before. 

Now I was really discouraged, but at least I knew where to go! I thanked the stranger profusely, turned my bike around and headed back. To think that I could have already been under the shower and relaxing with my feet up on an easy chair made me kick myself for not being more observant about our starting point.

Knowing where to go, I pressed on. Thankfully, those three miles went by much more quickly than I imagined, and I made it back safely, breathing a huge prayer of thanks and relief that I made it, and that although very sore, I was still in one piece.

It wasn't until I was relaxing on that easy chair, freshly showered and with my feet in the air that I realized something strange. The man on the fancy bicycle, who was in better shape than I, and who was headed the same direction as I, never passed me on my return home. He had disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. 

What would have happened to me if I hadn't met him? How would I have found my way back? I will never know, but I thanked God again for the angel God had sent to rescue me. 

A bit of color along the trail

Retirement: Am I Still Relevant?

Giving a seminar on my book in Colombia.

Dreams were a very important factor in helping me deal with a mid-life crisis from my mid-to-late thirties. I read as much about Jungian dream work as I could get my hands on to try to understand them. I recorded my dreams faithfully in notebooks and had a spiritual guide help me understand them. It is very difficult to understand one's own dreams because our waking conscious does not normally want to deal with the shadowy parts of our unconscious. 

As a result of my inner work on dreams and other methods, I wrote a book with my sister titled: The Spacious Heart: Room for Spiritual Awakening. (see column on the right). 

Today we have AI as a tool to help us get to potential meanings for our dreams. So I ran the following dream which I had last night through AI. "I was talking to a colleague of mine at Eastern Mennonite University. He told me that my position at EMU had been eliminated for financial reasons. I walked by other colleagues and they seemingly ignored me because I had lost my position." This dream was disturbing.

What's interesting, is that both my former colleague and I are retired. My initial waking response to this dream was to feel compassion for those at EMU who had actually lost their positions for financial reasons as well as many in our country who have lost their jobs for political reasons.

My dream seems to refer to me not feeling relevant since I retired. Am I still emotionally attached to my former role and feel "invisible," or worthless around my former colleagues as they ignore me? 

Jung gives some helpful insights to the dream, saying that dreams are meant to restore balance. In my dream the balance needing restoration could be between my active identity with my retired/elder identity, my personal experience with collective compassion and my fear of irrelevance with the wisdom I carry.

Indeed I often deal with thoughts of irrelevance during my retirement years. While I was working at EMU, I was so involved in preparation, presentations, meeting with students and grading, that I had little time to reflect on how relevant my life was. However, feedback from colleagues and students affirmed my relevance, even if I wasn't reflecting on it. 

Jung stated, "When the Hero retires, the Elder appears." These are both Jungian archetypes.

Giving a seminar on my book in Switzerland

Perhaps I was a hero by surviving those years in front of students. But that hero has retired and the Elder needs to appear. AI describes me this way: "You’ve likely lived a life of deep insight, discipline, and experience. Now, your dream signals a possible shift from active contributor to wise guide. 

I like that picture of me. In some ways I have made the shift to "wise guide." I continue to write blog posts, teach Sunday school classes, deliver seminars on my book in three languages and four countries. I teach for both JMU and UVA's life-long learning programs. I have also been tutoring Spanish for various groups and individuals. I've written about these in a previous blog on a dream I had: Mentoring. 

Yet I have lots of free time on my hands, and during those times I often wonder if I am still relevant. I guess I'll have to work with more of my dreams. They are now like the notes and cards I previously received from my students and colleagues.

If you are retired, how do you measure your relevance?

Mentoring

As a middle schooler, my Sunday school teacher traveled over 30 minutes once a week to meet with me for a Bible study. This was long before mentorship programs began in many churches; he did it all on his own. These sessions were extremely valuable for me and gave me a different male role model from my father along with deepening my connection to my church and faith. 

Mentoring students on intercultural programs
 leads to some unusual experiences.

Over the past number of weeks, I have been working on my dreams and their meaning. Dreams are a special way of learning more about what is happening in one's unconscious and can be messages from God. I had a spiritual director who said: "Dreams are like letters from God. If you received a letter from family or a friend, would you refuse to open it?" 

With guidance from some online sources, my dreams overwhelmingly affirmed my role as a mentor, both in the past and currently. They point to a need to continue my deeply ingrained love of being a mentor, and the joy that accompanies it. 

I retired from teaching in 2016, mentoring young adults for more that 30 years. Retirement ended my mentoring role with them, even though I have kept in contact with many former students through social media and emails. Unfortunately, these engagements have faded as the years went by. I keenly feel this loss, but I hope I have had some influence with my students like the church member who mentored me in my youth.

Group of students on a cross-cultural program to Mexico

I have kept up my mentoring in other ways. I have given numerous seminars in three languages on the book I wrote on spirituality. I teach my adult Sunday school class at least twice a month. I have taught courses for James Madison University and the University of Virginia's life-long learning programs. I consider this mentoring.

My dreams are an interesting mix of satisfaction from my past mentoring involvement, and my desire for future involvement. It seems to indicate future desire for mentoring young adults. Since I am no longer surrounded by young adults, is mentoring through my teaching and writing enough? I think so.

According to Erikson's stages of life, I should have moved on from "generativity" to "ego integrity vs. despair." Generativity is mentoring. My dreams indicate to me that I should continue in the stage of generativity if I want to satisfy my inner desires.

Do you work with your dreams, God's letters? What have you found to be life-changing?

Are you mentoring? How does that give you meaning and purpose?

From Rossmere to Celtic Spirituality: Expanding My Roots

 

Rossmere Mennonite as it appears today.

I dreamed I was at Rossmere Mennonite Church, my home congregation during my growing-up years. However, in my dream, not only was the interior of the church much larger, but the auditorium was packed with congregants. While growing up, the attendance rarely went over 75 people.

I take this to mean that my spirituality is rooted in my past, yet it has grown significantly since I was a teenager. 

I had a very simple faith as a youngster, but as I ventured out into the world, not only has my worldview expanded, but also my spirituality. I have drunk at the fountain of Celtic spirituality, Liberation Theology, Spanish mysticism, and spiritual formation practices. I wrote about them in the book The Spacious Heart. Needless to say, I have strayed far beyond my idyllic boyhood spirituality, and yet I remain rooted in it.

Yet many of my friends and family over the years continue to be stuck in their teenage idea of spirituality. They can only see the flaws that existed in the church of their youth and not only have rejected it, but have left it altogether. 

My family roots are in the Anabaptist/Mennonite movement, and they go back eight generations to Valentine Klemmer, who came to the USA in 1717. He became Anabaptist in ca. 1698. He had to flee Switzerland and go to Germany where he was still a second-class citizen, so eventually he made it to the USA. Many of his contemporaries were tortured and killed for their faith. How can I reject this heritage? These are my roots.

Indeed, I can't live off his legacy. I need to build on it. It makes me sad to see so many reject their roots without building on it. How much richer their lives would be. 

My hope is that I can continue to grow and expand my spirituality while remaining connected to my roots at Rossmere. 

I have visited the Grossmünster in Zürich, Switzerland, on many occasions over the years in my trips to Switzerland while visiting my wife Esther's family and tracing my Swiss roots. I have never wanted to be there more than today, May 29, 2025. It is where the worship service was held as the culmination of Mennonite World Conference's celebration of 500 years of Anabaptism in Europe. I had to settle for watching the live stream from my home in Harrisonburg, VA.

View of the Grossmünster in Zürich, Switzerland

Despite not seeing it live in Zürich, the ceremony touched me deeply. The service opened with a traditional hymn "Grosser Gott Wir Loben Dich," a hymn that has been loved through the years by Mennonites. In English it is known as "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name." The mass choir consisted of people from all over the world, representing the diversity of the Mennonite church worldwide.

For me the highlight of the celebration was the statements of reconciliation between Mennonites, the Catholic church, the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church. All three of these church movements persecuted the original Anabaptists.

The Catholic Cardinal present read a statement from Pope Leo IV. That the head of the largest Christian denomination in the world, knew about the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement was a pleasant surprise.

Foot washing ceremony

The other reconciliation moment that was moving was when the leader of the world conference of the Reformed Church, and the leader of Mennonite World Conference washed each other's feet; one an African, and the other a Latin American.

The 2-hour service ended with a recessional while everyone sang the African song "Siyahamba" or "We are Marching to the Light of God." 

Some Latin American friends in the audience

César García, President of MWC delivers the sermon

EMU's Choir was part of the mass choir.

EMU's Nancy Heisey led in prayer