#mennonites

I am going to need the following:

★ WHEAT. Keep your corn OFF of the Kent Farm, please. This ain't Nebraska or Iowa.*

★ A typically neutral Kansas accent. We are not in the South. We are not in Appalachia. You can search YouTube or TikTok for Kansas and "Accent Tag" or "Accent Challenge" to hear examples. Also, as much as I love and have adopted "y'all" into my vocabulary, I grew up saying "you guys". ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

★ A distinct lack of elevation changes. This place is flatter than you can imagine. At best we've got the Flint Hills.

★ A deep suspicion, distrust, and resentment towards all things Missouri. Clark himself is too good to be like this, but the rest of us are still mad about them trying to make us into a Slave State during the Civil War.†

★ Relatedly, much love for John Brown.

★ Peppernuts. This is something that can be represented outside of Smallville, like if Clark brings a giant ziplock bag of these addictive, tiny, anise-flavored Mennonite cookies to the Daily Planet. You eat them by the handful. They are the best.

★ Tbh more Mennonite representation in general.

★ Fearlessness in the face of tornadoes. We do not run to the basement or the storm cellar unless it's right on top of us. No no, we pop open a beverage and sit on the porch to watch.

*I did not grow up surrounded by wheat-themed school mascots like the Threshers, the Swathers, and a creepy sentient shock of wheat known as "WuShock" just to see a weird alternate reality where the culture is deeply entangled with the wrong damn crop.

An ongoing outbreak of measles in Ontario can be linked back to a “large gathering” last fall in New Brunswick’s Mennonite community, according to Ontario’s chief medical officer of health. In a letter to the province’s health units sent earlier this month, Dr. Kieran Moore said measles cases have been on the rise in southwestern Ontario and over 90 per cent of the cases have been among the unvaccinated. “Cases could spread in any unvaccinated community or population but are disproportionately affecting some Mennonite, Amish, and other Anabaptist communities due to a combination of under-immunization and exposure to measles in certain areas,” Moore wrote.

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Left: The Good Samaritan: He Had Compassion, by J. Kirk Richards, 2014. Right: Icon of Dirk Willems, by Jivko Donkov

[In] the parable of the Good Samaritan […] the people who fail to do good, who proved callous, were the priest and the Levite, who were more concerned with respecting their religious traditions than with coming to the aid of a suffering person. The one who demonstrates what it means to be a "neighbor" is instead a heretic, a Samaritan. He draws near, he feels compassion, he bends down and gently tends the wounds of his brother. He is concerned for him, regardless of his past and his failings, and he puts himself wholly at his service. Jesus can thus conclude that the right question is not: "Who is my neighbor?" But: "Do I act like a neighbor?" Only a love that becomes gratuitous service, only a love that Jesus taught and embodied, will bring separated Christians closer to one another. Only that love, which does not appeal to the past in order to remain aloof or to point a finger, only a love which in God's Name puts our brothers and sisters before the ironclad defense of our own religious structures; only that love will unite us.

Pope Francis, Homily on the Solemnity of the Conversion of Saint Paul, given January 25th, 2024.