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Travis Edward Turner Poling Deans Student Scholarship Symposium Manchester College, North Manchester, IN 10 March 2006

The Call to Critique: William Stafford as Anabaptist Poet I belong to a small fanatical sect William Stafford

Critical Foregrounding An emerging but little noticed category of literature, which by now could possibly be respected as a genre in its own right, has begun to claim a place of its own importance among the ever-diversifying canon of texts. This cluster of works only began to take serious shape during the latter part of the twentieth century as recent and more serious scholarship has focused on the value of their uniquely revealing nature. Not surprisingly, this literature is the product of a small minority often silenced by history, a community which itself has put little stock in artistic endeavors. But times are changing, and so is this religious and ethnic group known as the Anabaptists. Today a noticeable Anabaptist literary presence has taken root, as well as the beginnings of an Anabaptist literary critique. One of the first Anabaptists to formulate a beginning canon was a Canadian Mennonite named Rudy Wiebe (b. 1934), with his 1962 novel Peace Shall Destroy Many, a story that centers on a young Mennonite man caught up in the struggle of his Anabaptist upbringing that preached nonresistance amidst the reality of the Second World War. The books unsparing treatment of patriarchal rigidity

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in a small Mennonite community in Manitoba, cost [Wiebe] his job editing a Canadian Mennonite magazine (New Maps 872), but lead to the publication of at least twenty books since. Wiebe has received various honors, including appointment as Officer of the Order of Canada (Book Rapport). Brethren poet William Stafford (1914-1993) was the next Anabaptist writer to gain notoriety for his work. In 1963, Stafford won the National Book Award for his first collection, Traveling Through the Dark (first published in 1951). He went on to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and proseIn 1970, he was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (a position currently known as the Poet Laureate) (Poets.org). Although these and various other Anabaptist writers have achieved renowned status, little is known about the Anabaptists outside the group itself, and serious academic study of Anabaptist literature has only just begun. One scholar dedicated to the study and critique of Anabaptist literary work, including that of Wiebe and Stafford, is Mennonite poet and English professor Jeff Gundy. Gundys critique is written not only for Anabaptists; he is also responsible for introducing the genre to the general public. His article New Maps of the Territories: On Mennonite Writing from the Winter 2003 issue of The Georgia Review serves as the introductory framework for this essay. Gundys work leads into my own critique, which focuses on writings by Stafford, those Gundy described in 2004 as a model and inspiration for my own fumbling efforts toward some hybrid of ancient Anabaptist values and literary aspirations (Peaceable 2).

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Anabaptist Roots For the first several centuries of Anabaptist history, there were essentially no Anabaptist writers, exceptpreachers, historians, theologians, and producers of earnest devotional works (New Maps 870). As a highly persecuted religious minority, Anabaptists purposely avoided drawing attention to themselves from the world outside their enclaves of safety. Within their own communities, they focused only on their faith and on their material survival. There was little leisure or desire for crafting literary works that did not contribute to their general welfare. As Gundy remarks, Writing was prideful and individualistic, and good Mennonites were humble and community-minded. Writing might attract the attention of the world, which might lead to new persecutions (870). A brief history of the Anabaptists from Gundy provides a deeper understanding of the historical context from which this group arose: Mennonites trace their roots to Switzerland in the early sixteenth century [around 1525], when a small group of reformers became known as Anabaptists or rebaptizers. They resisted not only the Catholic church but also reformers such as Calvin and Zwingli who sought to create a new state church in place of the old. Emphasizing believers baptism, nonresistance, separation of church and state, and voluntary community, the Anabaptists found themselves vigorously persecuted as a threat to church and civil authority, but the movement gained small groups of adherents across Europe, especially in Switzerland, south Germany, and Holland. Some became known as Mennonites after the Dutch church leader and former priest Menno SimonsTodayabout 450,000 [Mennonites live] in Canada and the United States. (871)

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Another Anabaptist group not mentioned by Gundy in his article, and the one to which I belong and from which I write, is known as the Brethren. In 1708, Alexander Mack and seven others left the German state churches they had known all their lives, and began their own faith community in a baptismal service in the Eder River in the village of Schwarzenau. Most came from the Reformed church and had been part of the Pietist movement that sought to renew the church through bible study and worship in homes, acts of goodwill, and evangelism that called on all who heard to repent of sin and enter Gods covenant of love. They became disenchanted with attempts to reform the church, and concluded it was better to separate themselves from the institution they viewed as fallen. Mack was inspired by the Mennonites he met through his travels, and perhaps would have joined them had he not believed that they had fallen from their own doctrine, with which he wholeheartedly agreed. In the early Brethren pamphlet, Basic Questions, the anonymous author (probably Mack) says the following: It is true we consider our church fellowship superior to these now deteriorated Baptists [Mennonites], with whom we are acquainted, and whom we know. The reason is that they have deteriorated in doctrine and life, and have strayed from the doctrine and life of the old Baptists [Anabaptist]We are completely agreed with [the Anabaptists] as far as their doctrine is concerned, which does not teach anything in contradiction to the gospel. (Eberly 37) Despite Macks attitude, the Mennonites and Brethren have remained close friends for the last 300 years. Further, since Mack saw the Brethrenor, as they called themselves, the New Baptistsas reclaiming the doctrine and life of the earliest Anabaptists of Switzerland, Brethren consider themselves to be fully within the Anabaptist family. The

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largest Brethren group today is the Church of the Brethren, with approximately 130,000 members in the United States and Puerto Rico (Newsline). Because of the close similarities between Brethren and Mennonites in faith, history, and culture, much of Gundys assessment of Mennonite identity can be aligned with that of Anabaptists in general, including Brethren. The following three categories of cultural markers are especially significant: Mennonites in North America continue to debate the nature of their identity. Many locate themselves primarily within the Christian tradition as a third stream of the Reformation, neither Protestant nor Catholic but sharing many basic beliefs with both. Others emphasize an ethnic identity associated with particular places, historical events, dress styles, and foodsStill others foreground an ethical system that teaches peacemaking and community service modeled on the life and teaching of Jesus. (New Maps 872) During the eighteenth and nineteen centuries, most Anabaptists migrated from Germany to North America where persecution eventually fell away and they joined the white middle class. Acculturation signified as much a quality of life for Anabaptists as it did for most immigrants to America; and for better or worse, most German and Anabaptist cultural distinctiveness disintegrated over time. As the descendants of these pious, hard working people gained more and more education and exposure to the wider world, some sentimental fiction [by Anabaptist writers] was deemed sufficiently edifying to be acceptable (870), and works more literary in appeal eventually followed. While the publication of Anabaptist literature is slowly increasing today, this genre still includes a relatively small crowd of writers and readers, and even fewer critics.

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As members of a religious, ethnic and ethical minority that for several hundred years has shunned the world as dangerous and sinful, todays emerging Anabaptist writers are venturing beyond the borders of security associated with the community, and into the realm once considered to be avoided at all costs. Gundy asks some fundamental questions about Mennonite writers that again can apply to creative minds from Brethren circles: What place might imagination and metaphor, poetry and fictional narrative, have among a people who have long fled from them? What might the work of a Mennonite writer be, in the Mennonite sphere and in the wider world? (872). Can these artists speak of the world in a constructive manner without being nave; and can they utilize the methods of the world to speak to members of their own communities without suffering a new kind of exile? Even more profoundly, Gundy finally asks, Can such a minority ethos and culture, with centuries of obscure history and practice at surviving in an often hostile world, now offer something of use? (872). His response is worth noting: Mennonite writers share a common, often agonized contemplationof the place of the writer, the Christian, the citizen, the human being in a world of violence and disconnectionand a common drive to shape that awareness into language that may prove accurate, useful, and even beautiful. (872) In adapting to the wider world, perhaps Anabaptists have not lost everything valuable to their cultural identity. In the arena of the arts, Anabaptists may be among those groups most able to look critically at the world around them, having not taken it for granted for most of their history. Many Anabaptists have felt like social outcasts at various times in their lives, whether from their own religious communities, or, more distinctly, from the wider world. Since Anabaptists share not only a common faith but

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also an ethnic identity, this line between the world and the church is often more certain and more visible than for other Christian groups, and to cross it always involves risk. As earlier Anabaptists knew well, to write creatively from ones experience was to risk being discovered, and being discovered meant certain terror. This exact risk is less present today, at least in North America, but Anabaptist writers are still taking risks, and they are probably well aware of that fact. Currently, the risk in crossing the gap between Anabaptist identity and the world is that the world might discover this community and find in it an emptiness: a gap between who they are today and who they were yesterday, a chasm between who they are and who they are called to be. The historical gap and vocational gap are not always directly related. Anabaptists are not called to simply be who they were centuries ago; that is impossible. But the two certainly inform and dialogue with each other. The purpose of the creative minds among Anabaptists is to explore this emptinessnot necessarily to fill it, but to recognize it, struggle with it, and most importantly, to speak from it. Among contemporary Mennonite writers such as Julia Kasdorf, Patrick Friesen and Di Brandt, William Stafford is one Anabaptist writer who carried out this task most powerfully. Anabaptist Poetics William Stafford, although not raised in a Brethren family, married into one in the early 1940s. He discovered the Church of the Brethren while performing alternative service during the Second World War through the Brethren Service Commission. As a conscientious objector without any previous knowledge of the Brethren, Stafford easily adapted into the Anabaptist community. According to Gundys tri-part identity categorization, Stafford would be considered as an ethical Anabaptist. In a 2004 review,

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Peaceable Poet: William Staffords Witness, Gundy recounts the following quote of Stafford from 1955, demonstrating the poets ethical identity most clearly: I belong to a small fanatical sectWe believe that current ways of carrying on world affairs are malignant. We believe that armies, and the kind of international dealings based on armed might, will be self-perpetuating to a certain pointand that point may bring annihilation. Armies are a result of obsolete waysjust as gibbets are, and as thumbscrews are, and leper windows. (Peaceable 1) Despite this strong critique of US foreign policy that springs directly from his experiences in this small fanatical sect, most of Staffords verse does not explicitly pronounce Christian, or even Anabaptist values. He once said in an interview about religion and poetry, values in any direct use, any straightforward asserting, in poetry, are counterproductiveIn short, a direct assertion is a most limited offer of experience for a worthy reader (Revise 68). This declaration does not pronounce that poetry is devoid of values, but rather that Stafford was not always fully aware of them, nor intentional about inserting them into his writing. He does admit, on reflection, I would find such values lavishly present (67). Further, he confirms, There are not many labels on the value statements in my poetry; but my assumption is that such values are homogeneous all throughout the lines: we acquire our values in so many little ways throughout our lives that we may become unaware of them; but a reader in my opinion could feel in the presence of such values, if alerted to search for them. (67) Although he neither talked nor wrote about it in great length, his experiences as a member of the Brethren community influenced his poetry in ways which only deeper

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study could yield. But now alerted to search for the values and other hints of Staffords Brethren identity in his writing, readers can receive his work as an Anabaptist would read another Anabaptist. By viewing his work through the Anabaptist lens, elements can be found in the text that even many rigorous critical approaches do not easily reveal. A Ritual to Read to Each Other If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike. And as elephants parade holding each elephants tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we giveyes or no, or maybe should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. (A Scripture of Leaves) This poem reflects well the attitudes of early Brethren toward the institutional church, while calling the present-day community of faith to remember the spirit that inspired its origin. Appropriately, it serves as the opening to A Scripture of Leaves, the only collection of Staffords work to be published by Brethren Press, the publishing

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house of the Church of the Brethren. The poem speaks of the sense of community that has been lost among humanity, and seeks to awaken that spirit. The first stanza stands as a warning: If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. (Scripture 10) For Stafford, the powerlessness of letting someone other than oneself determine ones future does not come from being an insignificant cog in the wheel, unable to turn the gears in the direction one chooses. It is rather because people do not know each other. They are strangers, even if they see each other every dayeven if they sit next to each other in church every Sunday. Anabaptists historically viewed the church differently than the established churches around them. The Catholics said people are forgiven through penance and the sacraments from the priests, while the Protestants claimed that the church is a community of individual sinners, saved primarily by giving ones personal life over to Christ. In contrast, early Anabaptists saw church first as a community. Salvation depended on making a covenant with God in repentant believers baptism, but the covenant was also made with the congregation from whom one hid nothing. Church members confessed their sins to the entire church body, and took part in communion only after being reconciled to every member of the congregation. The scriptures were interpreted collectively by the congregation, and any member who acted against the proclamations of the community was banned from fellowship with the church. Not only was community a

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central and beloved aspect of the Anabaptist churches; to act in opposition to the decisions of the church was to go against all members of the congregation, who were bound as intimately as if they were flesh and blood family. Any dissidents were treated accordingly. There can be no doubt that this caused considerable heartbreak for the disciplined member as well as the entire congregation. Community is still very important for Anabaptists today, although it is expressed more in Sunday afternoon fellowship meals than in the daily walk of each believer. In the Anabaptist churches today, it is not at all uncommon to be able to say to someone you don't know the kind of person I am / and I don't know the kind of person you are (10). Whether or not Stafford had the church in mind when he wrote this poem, his observation that even persons in community remain alienated from each other certainly holds true in this context. Because of this disruption of community, the danger exists that a pattern that others made may prevail in the world (10). If they do not find connections to their sisters and brothers in the church, the Anabaptist world may be taken over by patterns not originating from their community. Historically, this meant that such patterns were hostile to the survival of the church and ethnic group. Sadly, it is not surprising to discover the same hostile patterns today, even within the Anabaptist churches themselves. While change is not always detrimental to the church, if members are to consider themselves still Anabaptist, they must remember the spirit that holds them together and therefore defines them, and allow the patterns of community to prevail. Additionally, if Anabaptists miss our star (10), the patterns that others have made will prevail in the wider world outside the churches, and their ability to reach into the world and serve it, like they so love to do, will diminish, if not vanish altogether.

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Anabaptists have no sacraments, or rituals through which God is believed to act in the life of the believer. Their forms of communion and baptism are seen only as human symbols of already present realities. Although it would not be recognized in such terms, community holds the place of sacrament for Anabaptists. Early Brethren concretely enacted this in the practice known as the holy kiss, a formal yet intimate greeting of a kiss on the lips shared between church members of the same gender. This action not only marked the recipients as members in good standing, but additionally symbolized the passing of the Holy Spirit, and thus the formation of a spiritual bond, between the two individuals. This bond would ultimately encircle the entire community as the kiss passed from one member to the next around the congregation. This practice is still found occasionally, in modified form, in the modern Church of the Brethren congregations during celebration of the Love Feast (the Holy Week reenactment of Jesus last meal with his disciples), but is most often seen only among the old order Brethren sect of German Baptists. This holy greeting has nowadays been replaced by a quick, courteous handshake in the beginning of Sunday morning worship, or a few hugs shared in the informal moments afterward. The shift from the kiss to the handshake seems to be a result of the loss of such intimacy. The second stanza provides a psychological explanation for such breakdown of community and identity: For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike. (10)

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When people greet for the first or thousandth time, or even have an extended conversation, they are often hesitant to let themselves make an authentic connection with the other individual. It is almost on the subconscious level, a small betrayal in the mind that they might not even be aware of, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break as they simply dismiss what people say or do. They believe that people live their own lives that have no bearing on their own; or they might be startled by someones words, and write them off as unworthy of their energy, like people do during their own horrible errors of childhood / storming out to play through the broken dike without them, instead of trying to lovingly understand their sister or brother. Stafford calls Anabaptists to tear down these mental barriers if they are to become a vibrant community of faith. The next stanza proposes an analogy of getting lost even when trying to build community: And as elephants parade holding each elephants tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. (10) Here Stafford may be criticizing the way some try to form community by simply holding onto each other, like the blind leading the blind. If one blind man falls into the ditch, all the blind men following him will fall in as well (Matt 15:14). They may think they are trying to create community, but rarely do they consider the manner in which they go about it. They would rather just follow the elephant in front of them, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park (10). The congregation will not find its destination, but will be wandering like lost elephants. What is worse, people know they are lost, but will

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not recognize the fact (10). Their hesitance to admit that they know they are on the wrong track is perhaps what Stafford calls the root of all cruelty (10). Following Staffords critique of the weakening social fabric among those who treat community as if they were circus elephants, the fourth stanza begins to propose to the reader a way to mend the tear: And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark. (10) This appeal is primarily linguistic, but language is usually not shadowy or remote. Instead, it is public, like the words vocal and outspoken imply. But then again, language starts in a hidden place, in the diaphragm, lungs, and throat; it is propelled by an invisible breath. When people are taking their time, and being level-headed, they form words in their mind. Guts, breath, brain: language begins as remote and shadowy. When people talk, Stafford warns, they could fool each other (10) or even oneself by lying, saying that everything is fine, that the line is not broken. But first, before talking, people should consider (10), and form their words in their mind, lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark by saying something that could break the bonds of love. Instead, members of any community must speak truthfully, opening oneself to the other in honest confession of, as Stafford says in the first stanza, the kind of person I am and the kind of person you are. The fifth and final stanza serves as a benediction for the work, the summing up and sending forth as at the conclusion of worship. Stafford says in his interview on

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religion, church services are poetry from beginning to end; they just are poetry. A strange thing to me is that someone can come out of [a] church service and ask about whether poetry is flourishing today (Revise 69). The final stanza shows how, through poetry, the church, or any community can flourish: For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we giveyes or no, or maybe should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. (Scripture 10) If community is to thrive in any setting in this individualistic era, its members must be awake (10) to moments of possibilities for connecting person to person in a strong line that holds, and discourages or lulls no one to sleep. It is their responsibility that the signals we giveyes or no, or maybe (10), given linguisticallywordsshould be clear (10). Verbal communications should not be purposely vague (How are you? Fine okay); people should be honest with each other, evenand especiallywhen theyre afraid to tell the truth that the line has broken, that the bonds of love are gone, that the bridge has fallen down. And words should be clear like light, for the darkness around us is deep (10). If people help each other see, If youknow the kind of person I am / and Iknow the kind of person you are (10), then perhaps communities will not become lost circus elephants, but will find the park and not miss our star (10).

Consecration: Towards an Ethic of Community Kim Stafford wrote about his father in the introduction to Every War Has Two Losers, a posthumous collection of the poets daily writings, all his life William Stafford

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was witness for a comprehensive view. He believed in the fragile but essential community of the world, and he wrote on behalf of what he called the unknown good in our enemies (qtd. in Peaceable 1). This fragile but essential community weighs heavily in A Ritual to Read to Each Other. His belief that no creed or code can solve all problems or smooth all the tensions from complicated human lives (1) is certain here as well. What matters is how people treat one another, and whether they know each other. Community must be built first, in whatever circumstance: in church, the office, homes, or on the street. They must stay awake, sending clear signals. Then they can begin to consider how to live as Anabaptists today.

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Works Cited Book Rapport. Rudy Wiebe. WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival. 17 May 2005 <http://www.bookrapport.com/profiles/rudy_wiebe.html>. Gundy, Jeff. New Maps of the Territories: On Mennonite Writing The Georgia Review. Winter 2003. 870-887. 17 May 2005 <http://www.uga.edu/garev/winter03/ gundy.pdf>. ---. Peaceable Poet: William Staffords Witness The Christian Century 6 Apr 2004. FindArticles. 18 May 2005 < http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_m1058/is_7_121/ai_n5992715>. Eberly, William R., ed. Basic Questions. The Complete Writings of Alexander Mack. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 1991. Newsline Church membership shows largest decline in three years. Church of the Brethren General Board. 27 Apr. 2005. 17 May 2005 <http://www.brethren.org/ genbd/newsline/2005/apr2705.htm>. Poets.org. William Stafford. The Academy of American Poets. 17 May 2005 <http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C040701>. Stafford, William. A Scripture of Leaves. Elgin, IL: Brethren Press, 1999. ---. You Must Revise Your Life. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1989.

For more on William Stafford, visit my website, William Stafford Online Reader: http://staffordreader.com/