I was born in Winnipeg and live now in Waterloo County in Ontario, which means that I have lived two large chunks of my life in Canadian regions that boast large populations of Mennonite people. If one were a paranoid sort of person, or at least the sort of person who draws conclusions from a variegated spread of facts, one might call this a web of evidence, or at least a meaningful coincidence. If one were that sort of person.
My notes for teaching Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness include asking the students to discuss Nomi’s statement that East Village is “a town that exists in the world based on the idea of not existing in the world.” Handwritten in my notes, but never voiced aloud in class, is the slogan “Steinbach: It’s Worth the Trip!” followed by scrawls about worthiness, trippiness, and the absence of presence.
The last time I was in Steinbach, I was at a reception for the 2009 Mennonite/s Writing conference, and I was in the kitchen when suddenly singing rose all around me like quick-growing plants, harmonies rich and close and filling my ears, the tune familiar but also just strange enough that I could not sing. This was not a supernatural event, for it was the other conference attendees who were singing hymns they had learned as children. The suddenness of being aurally surrounded was a profound outsider experience as I was folded into the sound that I could not make.
Definitely worth the trip.
When I read Miriam Toews’ essay, “Peace Shall Destroy Many,” I was reminded of how many communities run on secrecy and pain, and about the shame of knowing of those violences and saying nothing. In Carla Funk’s Gloryland, she offers us this image: “God’s hand as a javelin’s thrower’s, / elite, Olympic, trained on me, his bulls-eye.”