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Old 10-03-2010, 08:54 PM   #10 (permalink)
Martian
Young Crumudgeon
 
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Location: Canada
A quick aside on the Mennonite -- the way that I understand it is that levels of tolerance towards modern modes of dress and/or technology vary based on the specific community and sometime amongst families. My understanding of it is that the elders of the community are collectively responsible for deciding what sorts of technologies and conveniences the community are going to allow and disallow. The ultimate concerns are humility and togetherness; anything that encourages vanity or threatens the close-knit nature of the community is generally decided against, unless there's a very good reason for it.

This is why some Mennonite communities will make use of cars, for example, while others will not. There's a Mennonite community near my home town, and they have posts out behind the hardware store for them to tie their horse buggies to.

Note that almost all of this is based on my own reading which was to satisfy my curiosity, and therefore comes with the very large caveat that it's not firsthand and may not be one hundred percent accurate. Despite having seen Mennonites around town on a nearly daily basis while growing up, I never really had an opportunity to learn about them from themselves. It turns out that, while polite, they tend to be somewhat withdrawn and keep to themselves. Mostly, I gather, they just want to be left alone.

I did go to high school with a girl who was a Hare Krishna and was happy to explain her faith. No, she didn't shave her head or dress funny. She was vegan, believed in the sanctity of all life, and believed in Godhead -- which by my (again, quite possibly flawed) understanding was basically a way of saying that all living things are interconnected, spiritually speaking. I know that her family participated in meditation and chants and so forth, though I never saw any of it first hand. They were quite open and if I'd been braver then I probably could've asked to sit in and learn, but alas I wasn't the same guy then as I am now.

She was kind of a hippie, in retrospect. I wish I could remember more about her faith, but this is going back a good ten years now since I last saw her.
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I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame
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