Scattering Point: The World in a Mennonite Eye

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks to the editors of these periodicals, where earlier versions of these pieces first appeared: Creative Nonfiction: “Scattering Point” Conrad Grebel Review: “Fantasia with Raspberries, Baby Chicks, Wine and Roses”; “Scatter Plots: Depression, Silence, and Mennonite Margins” The Georgia Review: “Cathedrals, Churches, Caves: Notes on Architecture, History, and Worship” The Heartlands Today: “Lauber Hill” “Scatter Plots: Depression, Silence, and Mennonite Margins” was the 1999 C. Henry Smith Peace Lecture. I am grateful to the C. Henry Smith Trust for its support, and to Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Goshen College, Bluffton College, the 1999 Mennonite Health Assembly, and Eastern Mennonite University, where earlier versions of the lecture were presented. Thanks as well to all those who took part in discussions of the lecture, many of whose comments and suggestions enriched the final version of this piece. “A Black-Haired Girl in the Rain” was first presented in different form as a convocation address at Goshen College on April 7, 1999. A shorter version of “The Notebook in My Back Pocket” appears in the Festschrift Minding the Church: Scholarship in the Anabaptist Tradition, edited by David Weaver Zuercher and Michael King and published by Pandora Press, U. S., in 2002. The poems “Rain” and “Ancient Themes: The Martyrs and the Child” appear in my book Rhapsody with Dark Matter (Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Bottom Dog Press. ix Excerpt from “How It Looks From South Brooklyn” from Eve’s Striptease by Julia Kasdorf, copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Excerpt from “Having It Out with Melancholy” copyright © 1996 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. “Of Mere Being” from Opus Posthumous by Wallace Stevens, edited by Samuel French Morse, copyright © 1957 by Elsie Stevens and Holly Stevens. Used in the U.S. and Canada by permission of Alfred A Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and throughout the British Commonwealth by permission of Faber and Faber. Excerpt from “In the Waiting Room” from The Complete Poems: 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. The poem “On the Persistence of Landscape” appeared in Aloe 2 (1980): 32. Reprinted by permission of George Kalamaras. Quotations from Jack Stalter on pages 106 and 107 from a personal interview conducted in Flanagan, Illinois on July 28, 1998. Reprinted by permission of Edwin J. Stalter. Quotation from Freda Zehr on page 110 from a post on the Mennolink discussion group, October 21, 1998. Reprinted by permission of Freda Zehr. Quotation from Victor Jerrett Enns on page 112 from a personal email on May 5, 1998. Reprinted by permission of Victor Jerrett Enns. Excerpts from Amish Mennonites in Germany by Hermann Guth copyright © 1995. Reprinted by permission of Hermann Guth. Quotation from Verle Oyer on page 180 from personal conversation , June 1999. Reprinted by permission of Verle Oyer. Many thanks are due to Bluffton College, the Bluffton College Study Center, and the Ohio Arts Council for grants and support that made these essays possible.
Many people whose knowledge, conversation, and friendship helped me to write these pieces are acknowledged in other notes, x Acknowledgments but I must mention a few editors and special friends here. Special thanks to Stephen Corey of The Georgia Review for his meticulous editing and generous friendship; Hildi Froese Tiessen, Arnold Snyder and Marlene Epp, the equally generous editors of Conrad Grebel Review; J. Denny Weaver of Bluffton College for his guidance and example on the study of things Mennonite; V. Gordon Oyer, Hermann, Gertrude, and Hans Christoph Guth, and Rudolf Ingold for unstinting help, information, and introductions to my European ancestors and relatives; and my aunt Merna (Ringenberg ) Sutter for invaluable information about our Stalter and Ringenberg ancestors. My Bluffton College colleagues Mary Ann Sullivan, Judith Kingsley, Lisa Robeson, Lamar Nisly, Gerald Biesecker-Mast, Sue Biesecker-Mast, and Perry Bush, and my superiors Lee Snyder and John Kampen have put up with my sometimes eccentric ways and have helped me understand what it means to view the world through my particular Mennonite eye. I am indebted to all the Mennonite poets and writers I have come to know, but especially my compadres Jean Janzen, Dallas Wiebe, Keith Ratzlaff, and Julia Kasdorf, both for the example of their work and for...