Arrival (Part 3)

This is fourth section of a series of reflections upon my time with the Mennonites of Delano.  To read the first three sections, simply click on their link in the adjacent column.

“So, tell me again, just why you are spending three days with these folks?”  My sister and brother-in-law were kind enough to pick me up in Louisville and ferry me to Athens.  Along the way they tried to grasp just exactly what I was up to. “Just what are you hoping to get out of this?” my sister asked.  I explained my initial attraction and then went on to list a couple of concrete questions I wanted to explore.  What took about 70 miles to explain then I can now fortunately do in less than 70 words. 

Like a Spanish conquistador I am after wealth and I have heard rumors that the Mennonites have it in abundance.  However, instead of taking the form of gold, silver or jewels, their treasure comes in the less obvious forms of community, simplicity and non-violence.  Unlike the conquistador, I do not want to steal these things, but to touch, to taste, to see, to experience and if possible to take copies home. 

The day before my parents were to drop me off Erin asked me if I was nervous or excited.  To which I answered, ‘yes.’  A community organizer I knew in Philadelphia once told me that we fear what we don’t know.  To be sure there was much I did not know about the community in which I was about to spend the next three days.  As ironic as this may sound, I felt a bit like the day before my first day in the army.  The military base is a different culture with its own customs, regulations and expectations and intimidating to those who don’t know the culture.  Like that first day in the army, I was afraid that I would misinterpret a custom or violate a regulation to the embarrassment of me or my host.  Thankfully, most of those fears faded the moment I stepped out of the car at the house of Nick and Sarah’s.  Unlike the day I drove through those gates at Ft. Gordon, I was at ease.      

Not to scale

          One thing you can say about my dad, he has never struggled to make conversation.  He has a gift for finding common ground with just about anyone and it didn’t take long for Nick and him to start tilling the soil.  They rambled on about soil types, tomato varieties and pest control while I stepped back and watched.  I felt a measure of pride that my dad could speak this common language of the earth and a hint of shame that I spoke it so poorly.  At the same time I was freed to just observe.  It was in so doing that I made my first discovery. 

After the beards and Little House dresses, the first thing one notices about plain folk is their pace.   This is most apparent in conversations where they… just… slow… things… down.   Don’t be confused, they don’t necessarily talk slow.  Rather they talk without haste.  In modern society, a long pause or silence is usually awkward or a sign to wrap things up.  In Delano, silence is a friend.  On more than one occasion I found myself on the verge of filling what I felt as an awkward silence only to have the speaker continue with their story.  I watched as Nick responded to my dad’s questions with slow measured thoughts.  As the conversation continued, a funny thing happened.  I noticed that my Dad’s speech pattern was slowing a bit as well.  Ever so gradually, it was becoming like Nick’s.  Though I can’t speak for my dad, I felt my anxiety and concerns dissipate like the speed of my father’s speech.         

          Leon showed up while Nick was telling my dad about the oxen he was raising.  We’d stopped by his house before Nick’s where we met his eight year old son Jacob.  When asked when his dad would be home Jacob replied, “I think he’ll be back in a day or two.”  A day or two?   I live in a world where someone will abandon an appointment if the other person is 15 minutes late.  It is a world where my days are often planned down to the minute.  Not so here. 

As it turns out, Leon had just returned from helping to build a house in the Englewood community.  The rapid growth of the fellowship forced the community to purchase another farm to settle.  Having grown up in the area, I knew that Englewood was less than thirty minutes away, of course, this is by car.  Leon explained that it takes two and a half hours to get there.  Of course, this is by horse and buggy. 

                Sarah Alley, Nick’s wife, inadvertently gave me the best tip for understanding the change in time.  After my parents left, Nick handed me a piece of paper upon which Sarah had made a list of meals and the families with whom I’d be eating.  On the back of that paper she drew a map indicating the locations of the Martin, Rhodes and Hufford farms.  Above that map she wrote, “Not to scale.”  Over the next few days I would learn that not only was this map not to scale, but neither was their time.  In Psalm 90 we read that “a thousand days in our eyes are but a moment to you.”  In Delano, I came to see that an hour in our time is but 20 minutes to them.  Where we’d talk for five minutes, they’d go fifteen.  Where we’d have coffee for thirty minutes, they’d go ninety.  Where we’d worship for an hour, they’d go three.  Were I Greek I would have realized that I was shifting from chronos (time measured in hours, minutes and seconds) to kairos time (time measured in seasons).  But as I am not Greek I failed to realize this at the time.  Had I heard this before arriving at Delano I might have dreaded it.  Instead, I eased into it as comfortably as slipping into a warm bath.   

[UPDATE:  Though I intended to post the rest of my story on this site, after some conversation with my Delano friends, I've decided to not use the internet as a medium for sharing the story.  I am in final edits of the reflection and will be happy to e-mail a digital or mail a hard copy of the story when it is finished.  If you would like to receive either, please e-mail me at kwsikes@hotmail.com and let me know.  Thanks.]