Doon Valley Journal

I hadn’t heard of either Rhoda Janzen or her new book, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, before a post-Christmas browse through a local bookstore. But as I flipped through the pages, I knew I’d have to put it on my holiday reading list. Which I did.

And I loved it. An English professor at Hope College in Holland, Mich., Janzen is intimately acquainted with Mennonite history, theology and culture, yet far enough removed to possess the refreshing perspective of one who can skewer them with ease and a certain relish. For those of us who were raised in Mennonite homes and have, through our lives, been alternately repelled by and attracted to various aspects of this faith tradition, Janzen’s memoir of her return home after a series of personal crises was unvarnished, penetrating, insightful and humorous in the deadpan manner of a Mennonite Bob Newhart. The last time I rang up this many LOLs per page was reading Armin Wiebe’s The Salvation of Jasch Siemens.

If I’d been paying closer attention to the denominational press or the book sections of prominent U.S. newspapers, Janzen’s memoir wouldn’t have come as much as a surprise. In the Mennonite Weekly Review, editor Paul Schrag went to great lengths to document the decidedly mixed reception the book has had in Janzen’s home community of Fresno, Calif., where there is much handwringing about the promotion of stereotypes and the biting nature of Janzen’s satire and critiques. A profile of the author by Cathy Horyn in The New York Times, however, is much more revelatory of Janzen’s personality and intent. Erika Schickel’s review in the Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, seems to miss the essence of the book almost entirely.

Janzen has posted a kind of trailer to the book on YouTube, in which she provides some of the anecdotes from the memoir’s opening chapters (see the clip below). The video, however, doesn’t match the wonderfully engaging style that is Rhoda Janzen in print.

Janzen has already reached a deal with her publisher for a kind of sequel, titled Backslider, which Horyn describes as “an ongoing history of a skeptic’s move back to a community of faith.” Which could easily describe Little Black Dress, too. What’s evident from the early pages is that implanted in Janzen’s consciousness is a homing beacon that steadily points the way back to a tradition she thought she’d left — but that evidently had never left her.

It isn’t often that Canadian journalists die in the line of duty, at home or abroad. That fact alone makes the death yesterday of 34-year-old Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang remarkable. She was killed alongside four Canadian Forces soldiers as their armoured vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. The Taliban have claimed responsibility.

Michelle Lang

Lang’s untimely death has hit journalists hard — not because her life was somehow more important than the soldiers who died with her, but because the Canadian journalistic community is, despite appearances, a relatively small one. There are few among us who do not personally know someone who has been to Afghanistan to report on Canada’s mission there. Lang was the first to die doing it.

I did not personally know Lang. Over the past day, tributes from those who were well acquainted with her have been posted; they come from across the country and overseas. There is the account of Globe and Mail reporters Patrick White (on the ground in Afghanistan) and Anna Mehler Paperny on Lang’s career, spirit and courage. There is the column by Windsor Star reporter Craig Pearson on the loss of a journalistic comrade. There is the account of Emmy Award-winning reporter Graeme Smith, also of the Globe and Mail, on the fear journalists confront while working in a war zone. There is a blog post by U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson, one of the last people to be interviewed by Lang. There are statements of regret and condolence by many journalistic organizations, including Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. There is a tribute by Canwest News Service columnist Don Martin.

Dozens of Canadian journalists have, over the past six years, volunteered for a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Many do more than volunteer — they actively lobby their managers, syndicates and networks for the opportunity to go. Still others see the chance to work in a war zone, even for a short period of time, as a way to burnish their professional credentials and hone their abilities. All, however, are driven by the desire to tell the story of what Canada is doing in such a remote part of the world — and whether, through military action or humanitarian intervention, we’re making a positive difference there.

We owe a debt to Lang — for modelling journalistic integrity and excellence; for being brave enough to risk her life for the sake of understanding and clarity; and for reminding us that journalistic zeal and passion are no antidote against the deadly, ugly realities of armed conflict.

Here’s how employees of Portuguese airline TAP in Lisbon wished their customers a happy holiday season.

Hmmm. Maybe Delta Airlines employees and airport security officials in Amsterdam were doing something similar on Christmas Day, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab passed through their security scanners. In any case, it’s a nice gesture. Though, as Toronto Star columnist Cathal Kelley notes, this kind of routine will now get you tasered at some international airports.

The Lisbon airport dance is reminiscent of a routine in April of this year at Amsterdam’s main train station:

Here’s hoping that, despite our collective obsession and occasional bouts of paranoia over security in public spaces, we never entirely erase such displays of cheer, fantasy, whimsy and goodwill.

The end of the decade to which the Brits refer as the Aughts (“aught” being the Old English word for “zero”) is upon us. In three days, we’ll enter 2010. (Will common parlance come to prefer the expression “two thousand and ten” or “twenty ten”?)

The approach of that milestone reminds me of how tentative, narrow and conditional our understanding of history often is. Take the current decade, now coming fast to a close, as an example.

As we approached the end of 1999, it seemed clear that with the turning of all four numbers on our digital calendars — as if they were odometer numerals — we’d enter a new, as-yet-undesignated, era. The calendar was telling us things were about to change. Who were we to argue?

There were passionate and heated arguments about what the turning of all those figures would mean. Remember the Y2K paranoia — the notion that many of our automated systems would freeze and lock up, creating mass havoc? Then there were the debates over when, exactly, the end of the second millennium in the common era would arrive. Many argued (rightly, but inconsequentially) that the new millennium would not begin on Jan. 1, 2000, but rather on Jan. 1, 2001.

When extremists struck at the United States with such unprecedented force on Sept. 11, 2001, we revised our thinking. Many commentators, myself included, thought that, when the chronicle of this century is written 100 years hence, 01-09-11 would mark the geopolitical fulcrum on which the world shifted and a new chapter of human history began. Only eight years out, does that still seem likely? Not so much, really — the events around airport security in the last few days notwithstanding.

Just as lively debate still exists among historians over precisely when the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian Era or the Modern Era began, so I expect debate to continue for some time as to when, exactly, the 21st century arrived in our midst. For some, it will be the clicking over of the calendric numerals; for others, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Economists may one day argue that it was a particular date in the fall of 2008, when the biggest global recession since the Great Depression struck.

I was intrigued, however, to read a passage on the popular Quoteflections blog from Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Martin is quoted there as saying Nov. 10, 2001, was a pivotal date in the history of the past decade, if not the fledgling century. “That was the day the first iPod was shipped. To me, it heralded a kind of an interesting, ironic intersection of trends. In terms of consumers, what it heralded was individualization . . . . But Apple didn’t just announce iPod; it announced iPod and iTunes simultaneously. What that heralded was also the era of the business ecosystem — a gigantic system that a corporation orchestrates and manages. The two trends were more momentous than any of us had realized. It’s not that iPod caused it, but iPod signalled it,” Martin said.

Whose view will prevail over the long run won’t be known for another century or two. But two things seem clear. One, that the technological shifts of the past decade will play a role in interpreting and drawing the lines of history. And two, that history, as always, will be told in myriad ways, through the lenses of an increasing number of tellers, through an ever-expanding bouquet of tools and platforms.

I anticipate Christmas Eve each year, and even long for it, because by about 6 p.m., the commercial din that began mere days after Thanksgiving and grew slowly over the succeeding weeks toward a fulsome frenzy of mall mania, parking-lot angst and swipe-card silliness suddenly falls quiet. Silence becomes nearly palpable. Suburban streets, shopping centres and downtown office buildings assume a kind of haunting eeriness that suggests some kind of rapturous event has occurred, leaving mere mortals behind.

And, in a way, it has. Christmas has come, ready or not. Commercial jingles and slogans about the meaning of the season are mercifully sucked into some unseen cosmic dumpster, laying bare the stark, enchanting nudity of Christmas — the bare bones, the naked flesh, the unadorned essence.

There is nothing left now but to approach the creche — this crude, stylized manger scene meant to mirror some similar imagining of nearly 2,000 years ago. We tend too often to admire it only from afar. In our detached, urbane, 20th-century sophistication, we refuse to allow ourselves to get close enough. Like a finely played classical guitar or cello, this event is best appreciated in close proximity, in its unamplified, undistorted form.

Pause before this natal moment, this nativity scene. Take several steps, sometimes many steps, forward. Dare to gaze intently into the eyes of this child. Wait patiently until, like an a 3-D optical puzzle or motion picture, the full depth of this event suddenly comes into focus — the unbearable dimensions of the infinite contained in the finite, the eternal captured in the temporal. Once seen, you wonder why you couldn’t see it at first blush.

But the voyage of discovery continues. Look even more closely, adjusting your focus again, slightly, ever so slightly, until there, at the outer edge of the child’s cornea, you glimpse your own reflection.

In seeing that image, you grasp the mysterious, eternal truth that the invasion of human history by something divine is celebrated in the nativity, but is not confined to it. That discovery, with its many Christmas corollaries, is the best hope for peace on earth in a world conflicted by poverty, war and injustice.