From Village to City

For at least a month Len Hjalmarson has been posting quotations from Delbert Wiens; most notably from his very long 1973 article From the Village to the City.

I finally downloaded this article / short book and read it in full over the weekend. From the Village to the City is Wiens' attempt to develop a grammar for expressing the way their history as Mennonites in America has shaped who they have been and become as Mennonites. The movement from the village to the town to the city is both a literal historical movement, but also a metaphor for the way in which the changing cultural systems have shaped the language, habits, thought patterns and faith of his faith community.

I found huge amounts of his descriptions almost directly applicable to my own historical background. My ancestors were not Mennonite, but they were German speaking residents of eastern Europe (notably Russia and Poland) who lived in tightly integrated ethnic / church communities in the old country, and who moved as whole communities to the Alberta frontier — as much due to the pressures of ethnic / religious persecution as to economic opportunities.

Even though he was born in Alberta, the world my grandfather grew up in was not the same as the world my father grew up in, which in turn was not the same as that in which I grew up, and which again was not the same as the world my children have grown up in. In many ways, the shifts that Delbert Wiens describes, and which I recognize in my own family history, parallel in a much shorter time period the huge societal shifts from pre-modern to modern to post-modern.

I grew up in the town, but still with close enough ties to the "village" and the "farm" to be able to personally relate to that culture. But I have spent all my adult life in the city — with all its diversity and fragmentation. Church life, on the other hand has lagged behind in a sense, retaining a "town" character far longer. But even there, I have now tasted the riches of the diversity of ecclesiastical expression that Wiens' metaphor associates with "city" and found it to both fill something was notably missing in "town" church while also fueling a sense of discongruity — I have become at home in many very different church expressions while simultaneously being at home in none. This leaves a longing for more of a "village-like" community.

What Wiens has helped me see much more clearly, however, is that a return to the "village" would not really fill that longing. I have been changed by the city in ways that can never be undone — both for good and for ill — and there really is no way I could ever return. The deep community of the village was based on a narrow commonality of thought that I could now never fit into.

No, the only way forward is through the turmoil and disjointedness of the city, seeking developing forms of community that are indeed city forms.

The really good news, of course, is that for all its brokenness and for all its characteristic rebellion against God, the ultimate end of the city is not destruction and replacement by the village (or the garden), but the transformation of the city into the "true" city — the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. The ultimate destiny of the city is not the judgement of destruction upon Babylon, but the blessedness of the New Jerusalem, where God Himself dwells among His people — people of every nation, race and tongue — where all the diversity and individuality forms the basis for a new and deeper community.

That is certainly worth pressing on and through towards.

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3 Gifts

My, it's been a long time since the last post. Part of that has had to do with travel I've had to engage in for work — trips to Hay River, Edmonton and Ottawa in the past two weeks, and a lot of preparation for those trips the week prior. And part has had to do with a recurrent weariness concerning the state of my little part of the overall church.

The weariness was particularly heavy just prior to departing for Hay River. But then I received from God the first of three gifts: Miroslav Volf's book Free of Charge. Waiting in the airport, on the plane, and in the hotel, I simply devoured the first half of this book, in which Volf portrays God as giver, and outlines both our motivation for and possibility of giving as God gives. All of our giving, of course, involves the giving of things we have first received from God — a reality that makes it impossible for us to deal with God on a mutually advantageous transactional basis. There is no making deals with God — we have nothing He needs (indeed nothing that didn't originate with Him) nor any way of enforcing any "contract" we might strike with Him.

I was also particularly struck by his observation of three distinct motivations for giving: the pure delight in the one(s) we give to; the need of those we give to; and finally, giving to support the other in his/her giving. These three motivations were ably illustrated for me by the TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that I caught in the hotel in Ottawa. I don't typically watch much television, but the few episodes of this program I've seen have certainly involved giving to people who were very much in need. Often those needy families were also involved in giving to their communities, and the rebuilt home served to allow that giving to continue. And, of course, it was impossible not to see the pure delight the design team had in the children whose rooms they designed, and the joy they experienced in the delight of those who received their gifts.

Certainly both of these gifts left me feeling immersed in the reality of God's presence, and ongoing work of restoration of His creation and establishing of His kingdom.

The third gift came after my return, and was a bit different. I was listening to recordings of N.T. Wright speaking at Wycliffe College in Ontario earlier this year, on Romans 8. I was particularly struck by the progression of "groanings" in the passage. First, creation is groaning as in birth pangs, waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. Secondly, we too groan. And finally, the Spirit groans in making intercession on our behalf because we do not yet know how to pray as we ought. Wright suggested that often the vocation of the church is indeed to groan at the very place of the world's pain, lifting it up to God who in Christ has fully entered into the pain of the world and who in the Spirit continues to brood over the world — much as He did in the beginning, brooding over the chaos that was being formed into an ordered world — intent on bringing the new creation to fulfillment, in and through His called people.

It was as if God spoke to him, assuring me that this weariness, this "groaning" if you like, over the state of the church, was not without it's purpose. Rather it was part of the working together with God in entering into the place of the world's pain, a pain that looks to the perfection of God's church as its hope of redemption.

To be sure, I very much do not know how to enter this pain redemptively on behalf of the world — to pray as I ought. Rather it is by faith that I must trust that indeed the prayer I cannot yet pray is being actively being brought to the Father by the deep groaning of the Spirit within.

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