amish spring break 2

Since I so recently did a post on Amish Spring Break, I must share with you another commentary on Sarasota, the Amish-Mennonite retirement capital of the USA.
It is appropriately entitled, The Prodigal Beachy.

Here are some enticing excerpts.

Now when the two brothers had Come of Age, the younger brother, Jake Beiler, said to his father, “Verily, Father, now that I am Come of Age, I want to journey to Sarasota, Florida, on vacation, and since some of the youth group is going down over the same time, it could be a great bonding experience.” His father did not think too highly of this idea,

And Jake journeyed to Sarasota to sojourn for two months. And when his youth group was come unto the place, and he saw their manner of attire, that it was not Beachy. Then said he in his heart, “Yea, is this not the manner of Sarasota? For verily, I can come hither, and wear all manner of T-shirts and shorts, and get a full body tan, and the bishop can say nothing to me, for I am a stranger and pilgrim in a different land. Oh, what fun!” And so Jake went to Wal-Mart and stocked up on many shorts and every manner of striped and checkered and flowery T-shirts, and said in his heart, “Now no man shall know that I am Beachy.”

respecter of persons

This is a coined phrase that sticks in my memory from childhood. It comes from the King James language of Acts 10:34. Peter stands up and says, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” This was the pronouncement of Cornelius’ acceptance into the present work of Christ.

But the story I remember hearing as an example of a situation where one should not be a respecter of persons was from James 2:3, where two types of people come to you, one is rich and wearing nice clothing and the other is poor and wears tattered clothing. In our little Sunday school we were instructed not to treat the rich person with more respect then the poor person.

At home and in the daily life of my faith community in rural Minnesota, there were plenty of chances to work this out. We were not a minister’s family. We were not the model citizens of this community. In fact we had trouble being model citizens. I remember being the odd one out most of the time. To this day, I still catch myself thinking, “I don’t have any friends.” I have a few counter responses to that one now. But over all, this status in that community provided me and my family with an opportunity to practice becoming people who are not respecters of persons. Often, we would host people who were even more rejected than ourselves. Some of them would come over and we would watch as my dad would sit in the living room with them and listen to their rambling or ranting for hours. We all knew it wasn’t very pleasant to be in my father’s position. But we learned from him. He would treat them kindly. My mother would cook for them. And we would all eat together. Very seldom would we hear my father complain about these rejected folks that came over. He only ever said enough to confirm our own judgments. These folks were lonely and because of their rejection and isolation among us, they’d become a little crazy. Everyone becomes a little crazy when loneliness sets in. When there are people who have become crazy as a result of isolation it is no reflection on their own person, it is an indictment upon the society that contains them.

To this day, I often feel more comfortable with folks that hover on the edges of social groups. If they stand a little to close when they talk. If they talk incessantly about something mundane and uninteresting. If they don’t understand the blatant cues your giving them about your boredom or your need to move on or get to work. These are the folks I feel at home with. Urban ministry has made great use of and given me a place to further practice treating everyone as equals.

The most surprising thing for one of my roommates to find out was that I was bothered by a number of people’s behavior or even their personality, but I still hung out with them. I can only credit it to my parents that I am able to embrace the outcasts, because otherwise I would be very picky and judgmental about the sort of folks I was with.

Inevitably, when I give witness to the grace God has shown me in my upbringing on the topic of preferring some above other people, people self-consciously ask, “Do I bug you”? Do you just hang out with me because you want to overcome your natural aversion to me?

So what if you are. You are loved anyway. You are accepted. This is the point. Soon we’ll all forget what our aversions were.

witches and pagans among us

Around 5+ years ago, I made a concerted effort to hang out with witches and pagans. There was a ministry or two that did that sort of outreach but most of them didn’t last long. I don’t think they understood the depth of the spiritual forces they were dealing with and approached their audience in the typical Evangelical Christian Modernist way. I don’t think even I had a full grasp of it, nor if it is possible for anyone to have a full grasp of the mysterious dark forces, nor should they. Often in my quest I was with a lot of young punkish types and ravers, as well as Goths and new renaissance types. I didn’t have much success with long term relationships, although I had a few sinister offers and enough “visitors” at the witching hour to realize this was serious business.

I wanted to penetrate the darker circles—the ones which served another god and were to some degree aware of it in their rituals. But it must not have been my time yet. Last night however, I happened to be invited to a women’s group meeting at a local co-op. My friend didn’t tell me much about it but it sold itself on the themes of women’s empowerment and initiative in business etc. In actuality, it was a full blown pagan ceremony for the evangelization of more women into the serve another god sort of life. It was like Alpha but with an emphasis on ritual instead of an appeal to the intellect.

I knew something was a bit witchy when I walked into the space and there were rich red fabrics everywhere and then this get-up in the corner of the room with goddess and fertility symbols. Some nice ladies greeted me and offered me food to keep me company till my friend showed up. I noticed a tattoo on the daughter of the “high priestesses” neck of an ancient fertility goddess, arms outstretched with the dagger for sacrifice in hand. The meeting was to start at 7 sharp and the doors were to be closed at that time and the “meeting” was to begin as the equinox occurred at 7:07. We stood in a circle on a Persian carpet. We were welcomed and key people in the circle introduced. Like Alfa there were the leaders and the undercover helpers. As we began the ceremony we were given a candle and it was lighted by a leader or a helper. My phone began to vibrate as my friend was arriving and hoping to have me let her in. I broke from the circle, which is a significant desecration to the ceremony. I dallied with her outside hoping to avoid the ceremony but wishing to stick with my Christian friend and wanting to know what the rest of the empowerment meeting was all about. We came in, joined the circle and our candles were lit for us. Mine kept going out. Guess I won’t be going out from that place to spread the light of spring, as they suggested we do. We were urged to place our candles on the alter before beginning the creative project, which was just like Summer Vacation Bible School.

What’s my point? I don’t think I’ll really put a strong one out there. Perhaps I’ll simply say that we are called to evangelize. I do think it significant that I kept messing up the ceremony and the candle wouldn’t stay lit. It was an evangelistic demonstration of some sort. As Christians, we do interrupt any darkness in the works. As for fear, some of you may wonder--shouldn't I be afraid? Experience has taught me, fear is one of the worst temptations to entertain in the presence of evil. It stands next to blatant unbelief.

amish spring break

Since my Grandmother moved to Florida, my family has had reason to visit the place where Amish and Mennonites gather to go on Spring Break. Incidentally, the old also go there to make it their retirement home. Grandma and several aunts live in this place called Sarasota, which is a built up city along the gulf coast south of Tampa. Several aunts clean homes for the rich and make a good living doing so. I'm even told that Leno or the other evening talk show guy has a house on the coast down there.

But then there is this little space between the freeway and the coast, called Pinecraft, that the Amish Mennonites have occupied since before my grandparents' youth days. The Real Estate is interesting and this journalist writes about it here in the Sarasota Magazine.

What I found most interesting about Pinecraft culture was what my aunt has described to me. she even took me "cruising" past Pinecraft Park which is merely a dumpy looking city park that is overloaded with Amish and Mennonites during "amish spring break," which begins sometime in December and peaks during Christmas and New Year, then fades slowly until about April or May. Rental prices in Pinecraft accommodate the demands during this season. And yes, the state of the properties in Pinecraft is as awful as the journalist describes, compared to the rest of Sarasota. But then again Amish and Mennonites have always stepped to the beat of their own drum.

Gawking is Pinecraft's biggest pastime. There is this insurance agency across the street from a fruit stand on Bahia Vista Road that gives up its tiny parking lot for a bus that comes from Ohio or Pennsylvania or some other states with Amish population density. The bus arrives with it's mostly Amish passengers at a particular time of day. This is also the perfect time to go and see who is arriving to vacation in Florida. So, this large bus, packed with Amish arrives at this tiny parking lot filled with those who are welcoming them along with twice as many spectators. If the police weren't assured that these were peaceful people, they would assign officers to the area. One of these days I'm going to ride that bus to Pinecraft just for the experience.

what people think

So a friend was doing a search on Anabaptism and ran into this photo on flicker.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/toekneesan/307237705/

The photo was among his own personal family photos etc. Here were his comments...

Punk Anabaptist
Went to AAASS and AAR/SBL in DC last week. Two conferences about 3 miles apart, overlapping. Slavic studies and religious studies. Saw this woman on the way to the religious studies one. She had a traditional head cover, one I usually see on Anabaptists; Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, around here. Comes from Corinthians 11:5 which says, “Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.” This woman put an interesting twist on that. As you can see she is also wearing a leather jacket, rattle snake skin blouse, backpack, and wrestling shoes. Cool.

I must say I never fail to be amused when I watch people watching me.

When my brothers and sisters were younger we had a lot of fun going everywhere together. It was a riot. We would intentionally embarrass my mother. It was so easy to do anyway. Naturally, we were noticed because we were traditional and everyone was gawking but we hammed it up so that even my mother had to laugh. The best moment was once when we were driving down the freeway in our ancient green gas guzzler from a few decades ago. Mom and Dad are in the front seat with the two youngest and about 5 of us are in the back seat. We all look over at the vehicle next to us at about the time when the 4 of them notice us and stare in wonder. The pace of traffic changed and our fans had to brake severely and swerve to avoid getting into an accident. Forever after that, we laughed about being a road hazard.
(picture to be posted later)