Living in the suburbs and working at a major university put me in the middle of lots of cultures different than mine. Those of us in education know that this past decade's buzz words were "cultural diversity" and "multicultural education". However, many of us who are midwestern Caucasian Christians often feel we don't have a culture. One trip to the local big box grocery store was like going overseas. People were dressed in a variety of ways not often seen in the country. Islamic women wore hijab to burkahs. Indian and Pakistani women wore saris. We had a large Middle Eastern community as well as Eastern Asia living within our community. Our school district included over 35 different languages. Depending on what part of the community you happened to be in, Christianity was not the majority religion. As you can imagine, this allowed us to sample and enjoy food from all over the world with authenticity - not Americanized versions. Being in this environment was fabulous, but at the same time caused me to wonder more about my own culture. Did I have one?
Of course we all have a culture. It's made up by our race, our ethnicity, family traditions, rituals, religion, and community. Each one of us value particular things, eat particular foods for family gatherings, and celebrate milestones in specific ways that is unique to our culture. But being a White Midwesterner seemed boring compared to other people's culture.
Last summer, my second cousin invited me to be a part of her Ancestry.com page. I was intrigued by how much work she put into it and the information she found about our side of the family. It was exciting enough that I began my own page. Without paying for access (Yeah...I'm frugal), I was able to start the tree and use other google sources to trace my family back to Switzerland back to the 1500s! I found newspaper articles about past relatives in the civil war and a gravestone of one who fought in the Revolutionary War. The most interesting articles though were about my religious roots. Most of us who grew up in my hometown have Anabaptist roots. Our Old Order ancestors came here from Switzerland because of religious persecution and to have freedom to practice faith without government interference. Because of disagreements within the community in the later 1800s many left the Old Order Amish congregations and became New Order Mennonites (we called it Numanese in my family on Grandma's side), Defenseless Mennonites which later became the Missionary Church (which my family went to), and other Mennonite denominations. However, through all of this in my family's past, certain values, traditions, and food remained. I celebrate my Swiss heritage at our local festival each year and eat the food, but a part of me still wondered how it came about.
I write all of this because last week I went with my parents to an Amish family's home for dinner. It brought much of what I discovered about my culture full circle. As I ate particular foods, memories of Grandmas's cooking was apparent. She chopped her salad and made that sweet dressing the same way. She made that sweet sugar cream pie. The German accented English of the family reminded me of how Grandpa spoke. At the end of the evening, the family sang songs. They were hauntingly similar to mountain music of Appalachia. When they sang the German hymns, I was transported back centuries to hymns people sang soon after the Reformation. These German hymns have been passed down from one generation to the next. One of the guests asked the Grandmother of the home if she would yodel. Again, memories of Grandpa yodeling came to mind.
At the end, it was an evening reflecting on my roots and how I am the person I am today. Honestly, I was pretty amazed and a little proud. I came from an amazing group of people who thought that their beliefs and way of life was worth leaving what they knew, to go to an unknown place. Today many people of my culture also face persecution for what we believe. No, we don't face death, but we face losing jobs, being jailed, being called intolerant, etc. for being of a particular faith and having conviction to speak about our faith. My son was detained by police two years ago along with others jailed for even being associated with Christianity in our former suburban home. I wonder how people today will face this challenge of wanting to live out their faith in an intolerant environment?
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